A Weekend Of Worry, A Little Sadness And Lots of Driving

The weekend that has just passed was a strange and long weekend for many reasons.

Early Saturday morning my 21 year old daughter left her home city to embark on her life journey. It’s that moment when you really go out to conquer the world. In my post yesterday I wrote about how after three years of university she is now a qualified nurse, but with a tinge if sadness. She has secured her first job 150 miles away, but you have to let go eventually.

The worry for me started at around 6.00am. She was driving to Southampton, which is of course motorway driving, and even though she passed her test at 17 years old, she hasn’t driven until just a few months ago.

On her 21st birthday in August she drove home with her friend, and unfortunately a very large truck hit the back of her car at speed. Thank goodness there was no accident and the truck drove off, but most importantly nobody was hurt, but it definitely dented her confidence. So for her to drive 150 miles on her own must have initially been nerve wracking, but she made it back in one piece and hopefully that has given her a bit more confidence when it comes to driving on motorways. For me I couldn’t stop thinking about her driving back until I had the phone call to say she had arrived safely. Kids, no matter how old they get, you never stop worrying.

About 10am I left for what I thought would be a three and a half hour drive to attend BlogOn in Manchester. What I couldn’t have possibly anticipated was the amount of roadworks on the M5 and M6. What should have been a pleasant journey on a Saturday turned into a five and a half hour drive.

BlogOn was as always a brilliantly organised conference by Laura Seaton and her fantastic team. It was fab to meet up with old friends and make some new friends, and of course the goody bag was absolutely awesome as usual.

After taking five and half hours to get to Manchester I knew I had most likely the same length of journey home, so I made the decision sadly to leave early, otherwise I wouldn’t probably get home until midnight. As it turned out it, it actually took me 6 hours to get home. The roadworks on the UK’s motorways are without question a nightmare.

So I finally got home about 7.45pm and was absolutely knackered, and it took the edge off enjoying BlogOn as I have in recent years. It’s also made me think twice about going again, only purely because of the distance and the very irritating M6 motorway.

So in the space of approximately 36 hours I spent 2 hours worrying about my daughter driving to Southampton, 12 hours driving to and from Manchester, and I had about 8 hours asleep, which left 14 or so hours to relax and enjoy myself. In all honesty I felt on edge all weekend, which definitely had an adverse effect on my blood pressure.

To finish the weekend off, when I got home our toilet drains had blocked and I spent an hour shifting shit! A perfect end to a very long weekend, not!

How was your weekend? I would love to hear.