Beginning

We woke on Tuesday last to the peal of the alarm clock and blearily rubbed eyes in the inky darkness. It was bitterly cold, the type of cold that seeps in under your skin and burns. Yawning deeply we dressed with clumsy fingers before creeping down the hallway to the girls' room to lift them from their warm beds and take them outside where the wind was howling up the hill.

It must have been strange for them, to be one moment cosseted in warmth and dreams and to be taken from that into the cold and the unearthly shrieking, but there was no fear, just very big eyes as they very suddenly came awake in the witching hour.

The Possum however disliked this interruption immensely and howled in harmony with the wind as I skolled a V and settled in with chilly fingertips as Bingley searched in vain for the pre-packed dummy.

And so began our holiday. Car packed within an inch of its life, 3 big eyed children in the back seat and the hum of the wheels on the bitumen. As we cleared the city the eyes began to close, and as I reached the highway I was the only one awake, driving into the beautiful velvet dome of the sky, the stars singing softly to me.

I watched the constellations as they circled the Earth, waiting for Antares to rise. Driving on as the night deepened, my only company the trucks and the CDs I'd brought to sing along with softly until day began to break on the edge of the horizon.