This is another pre-recorded post – I’m actually writing this a couple of weeks ahead of time – but by the time you read this, we’ll be back from our 2024 summer holiday. We went to Northumberland, and stayed in the coastal village of Seahouses.
As mentioned in my domestic holidays post, we decided to have a holiday in England as my dad has had some periods of ill health recently, and wouldn’t have managed the driving that we normally do when we go to France. But it was also an opportunity to visit somewhere that I’ve only ever passed through; I haven’t had the chance to actually see some of the places that we’ve visited before properly. Which, considering that Northumberland is only three hours away by car, is a bit of a shame.
Consent
I also didn’t want to talk about where we were going in advance. Now, whilst this blog doesn’t attract the readership that it once did, I am also conscious that what I write here is public. And so I don’t really want to state exactly where I am at any given time, just in case someone uses that information against me. Of course, you may just decide that you like me and want to meet up with me, but I’d rather you didn’t – or at least, you contact me first and get my consent.
And it’s with consent in mind that covers my other reason for being vague about where I’m going. When it comes to my holidays, it isn’t just me going but my parents, my wife and our eight-year-old. And it’s our eight-year-old in particular whose identity I want to protect. I avoid using their actual name or gender on here, because they are too young to give informed consent for this to be public information. I don’t think they’re old enough to have a conversation about what a blog is, or that any information that I put up about them is public and likely to be available forever. Because even if I delete old posts (and a lot are missing), they may live on in places like the Web Archive.
Our eight-year-old watches lots of videos on YouTube Kids now (which is part of the reason for us cancelling Disney+), and many of these feature young kids. Now, obviously their parents are more comfortable with this, but it makes me cringe. It’s worth reading this Teen Vogue article about kids of influencers. I want my child to enjoy their time as a child, and I don’t want to have a difficult conversation when they’re older about all the things that I’ve shared about them in public.
Anyway, back to the holiday
Okay, so this blog post didn’t quite go the way I expected it to. Once I’ve had time to download and edit the photos that I’ve taken, I’ll be posting a series of blog posts about the things that we did whilst we were away.
