The Great Escape by Nicola Foster

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder”. That well worn adage could not be more appropriate than when enjoying a few days away from the children. Suddenly they stop being the ratty, bad-mannered, argumentative and noisy offspring I know and love and become calm, delightful, chatty and creative angels with whom you can't wait to be reunited.

We don't get many overnight stays away from the children. This is a combination of grandparents with an enviable social life, loud and boisterous children and the four year old being a bit unreliable with sleep. However, the children's father decided we needed a break and his parents agreed to have the children for two nights.

It is fair to say two week's work went into two nights away. Most of that involved the creation of a manual setting out who should be where, at what time, with whom and carrying what. There was a fair amount of time spent trying to brainwash the children to behave themselves, but that just deteriorated to plain threats.

Eventually we set off, just the two of us. Enchanted by the silence - no dvd, no fights over who saw a blue car first, asking for food, a wee or "are we there yet?", we felt like giddy teenagers. Our break unfolded just as we had hoped and we made several discoveries along the way - "the Cake Walk" which with the children takes at least 50 long minutes, actually only takes 20 even after a bottle of wine at lunch. I also re-discovered the pleasure of not waking to find a figure stood at my side and the joy of sleeping in total darkness.

I take no pleasure in admitting that on a day-to-day basis I shout a lot. It was incredibly refreshing not to shout for three consecutive days. There are several hot spots in my day - before school, after school and bed time - which have a far higher ratio of shouts per sentence than the rest of the day. So I made myself a pact for our return home. Lead by example I thought, stop shouting and deal with things in a calm, rational way, raising calm and happy children.

We returned home chilled and content, looking forward to seeing the children and putting our ill conceived plan into action. After 10 minutes of being reunited with the 4 year old, I was barking "say thank you to Grandma" and when we collected the girls from school, the 6 year old was cross because she wanted a snack and we hadn't brought one. In short, I would say the infusion of good vibes and positive thinking created over three days disappeared in under three hours.

I like to put the failure of my plan down to three days not being enough to refine my strategy adequately, so before I throw in the towel and resign myself to shouting forever more, I am prepared to give it another go and have a few more nights away. I think it's worth a try!