"Parents Go M.I.G. (Missing In Goa)"

Like butter wouldn't melt...yeah right

The husband and I can't quite believe our luck.  In what must surely be a bout of temporary insanity, my sis, my mum, and two other friends have offered to watch the monsters for us while we sneak away on a little motorcycle road trip tomorrow to the hippie enclave of Arambol in North Goa.

Being the selfish (desperate!) types that we are, we have allowed pure unadulterated lust for the open road (and for adventures of yesteryear) to cloud our judgement and have gleefully accepted said invitation to flee our parental responsibilities.  How could we not?

Long before the monsters were a twinkle in either of our eyes, the husband and I were rather footloose and fancy free backpacker sorts - cavorting all over the globe in adventures that we wouldn't dare brave nowadays (corrupt cops in Cairo, dubious Arabs in a blacked out Mercedes in Turkey, traversing treacherous washed out roads in the Himalayas on motorcycle...need i go on?)

But it has been ages since we've been given carte blanche to go away BY OURSELVES and relive some of the beauty that is India, and which can only really, in our humble opinion, be properly appreciated on the back of an Enfield.

Okay, so the journey will take under four hours...and we'll only spend a night away...but make no mistake:  we shall enjoy every last child-free nano-second of it.

Imagine...we can read our books in peace in the sand, play backgammon during dinner without having Dumpie chuck pieces over the side of the cliff, float in the Sweet Water Lake without doing periodic checks to make sure no one is in the process of drowning, be responsible for wiping only our own bottoms after using the loo....ah the bliss.

Actually I can't imagine it.

So until we are actually on the road by 7:30am tomorrow (hey we know a good deal when we see one - we're getting the heck out of here as soon as we open our eyes in an effort to squeeze every last drop of blessed freedom out of this brief interlude) I don't really believe it will happen.

Thanks in advance 'Auntie Ba', Mum, 'Uncle Cory' and Helen...without you guys this wouldn't be possible.

(And we know this is a one time offer and after twenty-four hours with the monsters none of you will ever, ever offer to do anything even remotely this selfless (CRAZY) for us again.  Ever.  Or at least until the monsters reach university age.)

And we solemnly swear to turn up at the agreed meeting point in Anjuna in exactly 32 hours time.  We promise.

(I think.)

The one-of-a-kind, super-amazing, Auntie Ba...without whom we'd die :)

You're smiling now...but in a day's time you'll be cursing us