The first half of June was a stressful month. My ongoing Open University studies – already sucking time away from me like a Star Trek: Voyager anomaly – culminated with an End of Module Assignment, Exam and Tutor Marked Assignment all due within ten days of each other. I managed to finish them all on time (although how well I’ve done on the exam remains to be seen) and felt rather pleased with myself. All it required was the complete abandonment of all activities outside of work and sleep (and sometimes I skimped on the sleep, too).
The whole experience left me drained. I needed to relax, unwind, recharge my batteries, discharge some tension. But how to do so? Killing sprees in the office are frowned upon. Even a hot bath, filled with the most ridiculously large fizzy bomb I could find in Lush, failed to do the trick. I needed a holiday.
Anticipating this, back in April I’d started looking around for somewhere to go. This highly scientific process consisted of me looking at Liverpool Aiport’s destination map and choosing more or less at random. The destination for my summer 2015 weekend away would be… (drum roll) Oslo!