Everybody needs a rest sometimes, right?

Even authors. Because let’s face it, it’s not all sitting at your desk with your feet up sipping cups of tea while typing out a few leisurely words here and there…

So it was half-term and the boys went to the grandparents for a few days to give my lovely husband and me sometime to catch up on house and garden chores, do some writing (in my case) and music-making (in husband’s case). Well, it didn’t work out that way. With the house quiet and the stress greatly reduced, we both fell into the lazy trap. It was as if our bodies were saying, right, enough now, time for some chilling out.

Time to go out… or stay in?

Okay, then. We gave in, quite readily. We decided to have some proper time off. This was after we’d both fallen asleep on our respective sofas before lunch. Evidently, we were tired!

We went to have a walk in a nearby nature reserve and made plans to go to the cinema and have a meal out. By the time we finished our walk, we’d discovered that neither of us particularly felt like glamming up and going out. Instead, we stopped out our local supermarket, stocked up on ingredients and cooked ourselves a yummy three-course meal. We started cooking at about six p.m. and we finished tidying the pots away at about ten p.m. We listened to music and drank wine and had a little dance while we were at it.

Do you know what? It was bliss. Apart from the fact that I was wearing pyjamas, it was almost like a return to a date night of old, before we were officially together (ha ha, that’s going back a few years now!), when we’d spend hours cooking and chatting and laughing and finding things out about each other.

We went out for a meal and a movie the next day (we saw A Good Day to Die Hard!), and that was fabulous too. And on the Monday morning, when I sat down in front of the computer again, I felt really inspired. I hammered out nearly 5,000 words in the space of a single morning.

Well, I tell you, if a weekend off produces that dramatic a result… I’m all for it! See you on Monday, folks. Rock on!

What’s your favourite ‘date night’ in ~ or out? How do you recharge and refresh body and mind?