Testing time on holiday

Enjoy your holiday, did you? Jolly good. I hope all is still well with your marriage.

According to American sociologists, post-summer holiday is now second only to New Year as peak divorce time. Which gives an ominous new meaning to summer break.

But if anything’s going to show up the cracks in a relationship, two weeks away from all that’s familiar is going to do it.

All that free time with no work, no mates, no commitments. No humdrum everyday tasks for distraction. Throw in sunburn, lots of local wine and a few mosquito bites – and maybe even no Wi-Fi – and you have a recipe for melt down. Especially if you’ve started with flight delays, a plane full of screaming toddlers and your luggage still on the tarmac.

Or relentless Scottish rain slashing against the window when the TV reception’s rubbish and it’s twenty miles to the nearest pub.

On family holidays parents have a full-time job keeping the kids entertained – not exactly relaxing but, which if they finally get an hour or two alone together in the evening, at least gives them something to talk about.

But once the children have scorned family holidays, there’s many a fifty something couple looking at each other and wondering what, if anything, they have to say …

That’s assuming you’ve already negotiated the basic terms of the holiday – hot or cold climate, lounging on the beach or by the pool as opposed to visiting museums and galleries or healthy hikes. Long lie-ins opposed to crack of dawn starts to get the best of the day. Extravagant meals in fancy restaurants or DIY picnics.

Two weeks in 24 hour togetherness certainly tests a relationship. Maybe couples intending to marry should have the honeymoon before the wedding – it could save a lot of heartache in the end.

Not to mention to to mention a fortune in divorce fees.

MEANWHILE, the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk are apparently reconciled. When they split up five years ago, they didn’t rush for divorce but instead simply retired to separate wings of their home.

Easy when that’s thousand year old Arundel castle with goodness knows how many rooms. Trickier when you’re in your average semi, still sharing a kitchen and bathroom.

Let’s face it, even misery is more comfortable when you’re rich.

ABOUT a third of the Team GB medallists were educated at independent schools, just slightly fewer than in London 2012. Inevitably, really, as the schools have more time, more money, more staff and more opportunity to encourage students in various sports.

At my nieces’ very posh school, for instance, facilities include:

25m swimming pool, sports hall, gym, dance studio, fitness suite, climbing wall, four squash courts, five lacrosse pitches, athletics track, three rounders pitches, floodlit astro turf, football pitch, 8 netball courts and 20 tennis courts.

All this would be good in a small town, but it’s actually just for 550 girls. Lucky them. And, of course, their parents have paid dearly for it.

Each British medal at the Olympics cost around £4million of public money – mainly from the Lottery. Well done Team GB.

But wouldn’t it be wonderful if as much money could be spent improving sports facilities in our state schools too?

IF Jeremy Corbyn really had to sit on the floor of a crowded Virgin East Coast train from London to Newcastle then he was just hopeless.

He knew at least a few days before that he was going to Newcastle, so why didn’t he – or his team – book him a seat? Pretty basic preparation. If he can’t even think ahead to organise a train seat, how on earth does he think he’s going to organise the country?

Anyway, it turned out that there were actually plenty of vacant seats only he chose to ignore them and was caught out by CCTV cameras.

Oops. So Mr Corbyn – who promised us a new era of “honest” politics, is either incompetent or telling downright porkies.

Either way, we’re not impressed.

THOUSANDS of tons of recycling end up going to landfill, says a new report and councils are blaming us for putting stuff in the wrong boxes.

It doesn’t help that we don’t have a single national scheme but that every local authority does things differently. One of the challenges of renting a holiday cottage is getting the recycling instructions right.

Once in Wales I sorted everything meticulously into green, brown, black or blue bins, plus a separate heap of large cardboard and a bag for newspapers. I was very pleased to have done my bit.

Then along came the binmen and threw everything together into the back of the same lorry…

FOUR armed policemen stood over a woman on a French beach this week and forced her to remover her burkini.

Nigella Lawson famously wore a burkini a few years ago but I don’t suppose the French police would have sent four armed officers to persuade her to remove it.

I’m not sure what the French police action, a horrible, embarrassing exercise in public shaming, has actually achieved in keeping the country free of terrorists. But it will certainly have made some angry people even angrier – never a sensible plan.

WHY were the successful Olympic athletes so often pictured biting their medals? Were they testing the metal?

Or maybe they were secretly hoping they were chocolate.

THE first signs of autumn were always getting the harvest safely in, the first falling leaves, your sandals coming apart and the T-shirts going shapeless. And the challenge of getting your children into sensible school shoes.

Now we know summer’s nearly over when we get the TV trailers for Poldark and the Great British Bake Off.

Still, at least it gives us something to look forward to as the nights draw in.

BUT on Wednesday it was still definitely summer. With friends in Newcastle in blazing sunshine, we sipped our prosecco, listened to children building sandcastles in the Quayside Seaside, glanced across at the Baltic and watched the amazing Millennium Bridge close and open. It was glorious and a world away from the Tyneside of 20 years ago. We could easily have imagined ourselves in some exotic foreign spot rather than the banks of the sparkling Tyne.

“Jeez,” said an Australian at the next table. “Is this really Newcastle?”

Which was pretty much what we were thinking too.