Reillys on Tour

It was the start of the summer holidays. The Reilly family had headed North to the Peak District to go youth hostelling, prior to heading East to Newark for the Focus festival. A good time had been had by all. We'd been staying in the picturesque and slightly remote village of Hartington. The weather had been typical of British summertime. Which is to say, a combination of not raining whilst looking like it might, actually raining and on occasion, being suspiciously pleasant. One must roll with whatever nature throws at you in this country. The UK loves a railway. We have many. But we used to have more. Back in the 1960s a man named Dr Beeching wrote an infamous report on the profitability of our forest of railway lines. And as a consequence there was deforestation; many of those railways became ex-railways. Death can lead to rebirth. Whilst many railways stopped being railways, they left behind them tracks, tunnels and paths that joined up destinations. By and large, these trac...

It is June 2022. COVID hove into view back in early 2020 and radically adjusted all our lives. Part of that was the ability (and ease) of travelling abroad. Like so many, the Reilly family were effectively grounded since then. We have made trips, but we never left England. So when life started to seem less restrictive, we made plans. We found ourselves camping in a place called Cavallino in Italy. It looks on a map, as if it is near Venice. Looks can be deceiving. It turns out Swindon has better travel links to London than Cavallino has to Venice. However, links it has, and links we have used. You can travel from Cavallino on the bus down to Punta Sabbioni and then switch to a boat for the trip into Venice (or rather "Venezia"). This is the Reilly family on Burano, an island to the north of Venice. Having left the UK, where pretty much all COVID related mask restrictions were lifted some time ago, it was a surprise to discover that they are still in force in Italy. ...

My dear Lisette, You are an amazing mother to the boys. You might doubt that yourself on occasion, but you most certainly are. Let's take a moment and think about how this is true. Providing Each day you provide food, clothing and bedding for the boys. They don't worry about where their next meal is coming from, they don't worry about whether they'll have clothes. Children shouldn't have to worry about such things, and ours don't. They are relaxed and know these will be taken care of, because of you. The Rolling Stones "You can't always get what you want But if you try sometimes, well, you might find You get what you need" If you listened to what the boys wanted, they would live very different lives. They don't have phones, they don't watch everything on TV that they'd like, they don't go to bed at 10pm. You're careful to have children that have what they need, but not what they want. If they had what they wanted, ...

The bodies lay upon the ground in the field. They were dressed colourfully, each kitted out in varieties of neon outfits that shone in the sunshine. "They're very still" I said, by way of summing up the situation. "They all died" said Lisette, who was also taking in the view. Because I'm a slightly gullible fellow (and, well, you just never know) I watched keenly half wondering if it might be true. They were very still. After a surprisingly long period of time, the figures started to move slowly. It turns out that yoga in a field can, temporarily, be indistinguishable from death. Camp Wowo We were staying at a campsite named Camp Wowo in East Sussex, England. It's a campsite I have stayed at many times over the years. Initially just myself and Lisette. More lately, having got past the initial intensity that results from the arrival of children, we've come to taking our boys to camp together as a family. It's never been without incident. The...

It was Friday 13th. Gran had never been keen on that date. So it was ironic, or perhaps appropriate, that date came to be the occasion of her funeral. The universe likes a giggle. At 10 o'clock in the morning the family and friends of Averil Bessie Jenkins gathered at the Poor Clare's Convent in Crossbush, near Arundel. Home of Sister Pat; aunt to me, sister to my mother and my aunts, daughter of Gran. Averil had been a Jenkins, a Frame and a Luxford over the course of her life. The building was filled with people who had known all three. I'd travelled down with my sister Kirsty from London that morning by train, where our brother Peter met us at Arundel station. Mum had primed me beforehand and so I found myself clean-shaven, dressed in a black suit, wearing a tie and smart black shoes. It was very unlike me. Mum was delighted. Aunty Frances took a photograph. The chapel at the Convent had high ceilings and was painted white. Windows high up let light stream into th...

On May 27th 2019 the weather in Peschiera del Garda looked like this: Whilst in Twickenham it was more like this: Since myself, my good lady Lisette and the marvellous, "extreme" (that's right! - Ben) Benjamin and James were camping in the former location, we collectively agreed it was a bummer. To be more accurate, we were not so much camping as glamping (correct! - Ben). Whilst we were living under canvas, we had not erected that canvas with the honest sweat of our mutual brows. Rather, we had opted to show up and occupy a tent which had already been pre-assembled for our living pleasure. Even calling it a tent seems a stretch, given that it featured a 4-ring gas stove, a fridge, a microwave, beds, lights, electricity and was sited upon a raised wooden deck rather than muddy earth. But it didn't have a toilet or running water, so we could still argue that on some level we were still "getting back to basics". This kind of camping also fulfils a ...