Leave it to me?

It had turned into a real conundrum – up against a ticking clock, or to be more precise, a dwindling time frame, my options were fast running out.

I work for one of those places where you have a set number of annual leave days that need to be used up by the end of the leave year, which, for me, is the last day of March.

It is literally a case of ‘use it or lose it’, and, at the start of March 2023, I found myself left with a sizeable number of leave days that would be lost if not taken within a rapidly receding three-week period.

After a hastily arranged meeting with my two colleagues, who were in pretty much the same predicament, we put together a plan to co-ordinate our combined time off.

As a result, my remaining holiday entitlement ended up in randomly placed blocks of days scattershot over the last three weeks.

So, what to do with my enforced holiday time? Revisiting a few of my favourite haunts was definitely on the cards, like here at the Kingston Riverside:

By the river …

Canbury Gardens, Kingston got a look-in:

View from the Canbury Gardens side …

There were also a few trips to the king of those leafy, urban green spaces, the legend that is known as Richmond Park.

Other highlights included the rediscovery of some reasonably priced, tasty soup noodle in the street food section of Kingston Market Place, and there was even time to renew my membership of New Malden Library, which had lapsed completely over the years of the COVID pandemic.

There were also a few mundane chores to be done – as readers of my ‘Bills a gogo!’ post of March 2022 will know, this time of year is when those big household bills start rolling in.

I covered the Housing Insurance, and just renewed the MOT maintenance certificate for my car before the cover ran out. With the oncoming hefty Council Tax bill on the way, it is likely to be an expensive annual break.

My help with the care for my mother has meant that a few things, such as a trip to the South Bank in London, had to be given a miss, but overall I think good use was made of my free time.

I have kind of got used to the three-day and one-day working weeks thrown up by the leave booking process – it’s going to feel a bit strange when the regular working week resumes in April!