Walking back from town the other day I let Bethany out of the pushchair on the road going to South Park, keeping hold of her hand in case she decided to make a beeline for the river. Once in the park I let her have more of a free reign as we followed the path round to the exit that leads to our house which thrilled her enormously but was no guarantee of her following the same path as myself. After a bit of dallying and wanting to double back I hit upon the idea of encouraging her to follow me be proffering her grapes from the bunch I had just purchased in the market. Sure enough, arms outstretched she toddled after me, trying to grab her prize which I let her have after a few metres and then repeated the process. Feeling rather pleased with myself for getting her to go the way I wanted I soon realised that she was happy enough as I'd let her have a run around and she'd had some grapes without even asking for them.
    We've booked a week away in August with Bethany in mind as well as we will go to a holiday park near Great Yarmouth. The promised kids clubs will no doubt feature people dressed as an assortment of woodland animals, so hopefully we get the right venue and don't end up at a furries fetish conference. Whilst I am used to these places charging extra to hire a cot and highchair (fairplay to Travelodge the other week who provided a cot at no extra charge) but £10 for bed linen is taking the piss. Is everybody following the Ryanair model now and slapping surcharges on everythingg they can think of. The cot and highchair is bad enough - at the moment you don't pay more if you actually want a bed or a chair in your room but where will it stop. Currently the other popular surcharge is for checking in at a reasonable time rather than late afternoon but what next: An extra £10 if you want a key for the toilet in the room; £5 for every enquiry made at reception. The holiday is still not that expensive but when they provide a list of optional extras for things that you would think were relatively basic requirements then you can't help but feel that they are being greedy.
    I am sure that there are some fussy people who only like to sleep in their own Egyptian cotton sheets that they carry everywhere with them but I think that this is probably a niche market. Besides those customers would probably not be booking into a standard family caravan in a holiday park.