So this week has seen the first module of our A-N/RD1st coaching program. It has been a bloody knackering week to put it bluntly. Thanks in part to my husband forgetting to book the hotel we had to stay in before the end of May (long story), and so it was that on Sunday I found myself driving up to Bournemouth to drop off my daughter and lab at my mother-in-laws with my other half. Spending two nights in a lovely hotel in the heart of the New Forest miles from anywhere but with a lovely pool, and then returning to Bournemouth on Tuesday to collect my daughter, driving home, helping my other half clean out the animals, picking up my son and then the four of us, plus the cat, getting in the car again to drive up to Lancaster.
For those of you who don’t know, Lancaster is a looooong way from Southern most Hampshire, in fact, it is a bloody long way. Especially when you factor in loo stops, arguing children, auty boy (my son) constantly hitting me and the cat panting and as my daughter pointed out, “foaming at the mouth” constantly as he does not like cars.
Anyhow I digress. So after leaving the first hotel at 8:30am on Tuesday, we arrived at the next one at 7ish. I have realised that opting to stay in a motel at a services is actually full of positives: free parking, green space outside, and most importantly for our needs that night, a cafe and an M&S Food which meant I had a healthy breakfast for the next morning.
Needless to say the cat was happy at arriving as it meant he could eat and drink. However this was soon tempered by his all too fast realisation that this warm, quite small room with 2 adults and 2 children crammed in was to be his new home for the foreseeable.
I understand that this has nothing to do with coaching and you probably couldn’t care less about my cat or the journey to Lancaster, but I feel that (a) I should set the scene a little and (b) I do believe this long and awkward journey could very well serve as a metaphor for my journey from self-aware but self-sabotaging artist, to coaching guru as of course that is what I will become (hopefully) in time….
