The Great (No Kids) Escape

Site Default - 20 Mar 17

My husband and I rarely get any time together, on our own, without our two boys. I’m talking a whole night and day away – somewhere that doesn’t have a washing machine pinging because it needs emptying, somewhere that doesn’t have a skyscraper-high pile of ironing winking at me whenever I walk past, somewhere far away from the domestic drudgery that I face when I’m at home.

I’m talking a hotel room where you don’t have to pick up your towels, where you can soak in a daytime bath, where you can lie on a freshly made bed with a cup of tea and get through a stash of help-yourself biscuits, where you get to do nothing because there just isn’t anything to do, where there are no tiny terrors tearing around the place and making demands. I’m talking utter bliss.

Thanks to an invite to a 40th in London, my partner and I managed to get one of those golden nights away last weekend. My parents offered to have the children, so we dropped them off on our way. Leaving the boys was easy – Mum’s promise of a trip to a crocodile farm, Sky Movies on tap and her full-to-the-brim sweet drawer certainly helped – so we shut the front door behind us and set off (smug in the knowledge that we had a two-hour car journey without any squabbling little ones in the back).

Once at the hotel, my husband and I got to indulge in some of that amazing no-kids time before the party, albeit not together: he sat in the bar watching the rugby with his friends and I lay on the bed catching up on trashy TV and drinking tea before soaking in a bath. I can’t remember too much about the night itself – I blame the vodka – but my partner and I definitely had a good time. And not having two sprightly sprogs around to bounce on our bed and wake us up at 6am meant that we could catch up on some much-needed sleep.

Ok, so the hideous hangover was not a high point, nor was waking up with my eyes shut tight because I’d slept in all my make-up, nor was the horrendous traffic on the way home, but spending that time away from the kids and just being with my husband made it all worth it. Because when you’re a parent it’s so easy to forget that you’re part of a couple. That your relationship with each other is just as important as your parenting. And sometimes you need time away, just you two, to remind yourselves of that.

So now I’m busy planning another Great (No Kids) Escape and looking forward to another fun-filled night of freedom. Though next time I’ll be laying off the alcohol and sticking to the tea.

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Fiona Pennell lives in the Cotswolds with her husband and their two boys, Jack, 6, and Otto, 4. A former YOU magazine sub-editor, Fiona now spends her days being trampled on, going on slug hunts and dreaming of lie-ins. (Twitter: @fiona_pennell)

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