Hey y'all. I'm back! Well, back for a little bit - from late on Wednesday night until Sunday, in fact, and then holiday part #2 starts on Sunday Croatia, unsurprisingly enough, was hot and sunny and very restful! I feel under a bit of pressure to blog well about it, though, since we were sitting around one evening discussing blogs - as families do - when my own mother opined that The Musings of a Red Dalek has gone downhill over the past six months. A stab to the heart is what it was, I tell you, a bloody heart stabbing incident indeed. (Between mournful gasps, I countered that at least it was still going, and has comfortably outlived most of its contemporaries. So there.)









As you may have gathered, Tasha was having an eventful time doing other things this time round, so Katie and I held the generational fort with a raft of silly activities. These included a developing a serious addiction to German MTV - or Mighten Tighten Vighten, as it shall now forever be known - to the extent that I now have a bunch of German-only pop songs stuck in my head: an itch that Spotify sadly fails to satisfy. Wir war'n Geboren um zu Leben, mit den Wundern jeder Zeit!

I have to say, though, that acting as a family of four for a while did confirm to me that being one of three siblings is clearly best. I know this is controversial territory. Only children in particular can be rather militant in demanding equal rights these days, and I'm totally not prejudiced - some of my best friends are only children! - and liberal enough to believe if consenting adults don't want to share their toys that's alright, as long as they do it in private and don't try to teach siblinglessness in schools. But just one sibling still isn't enough. Don't get me wrong: Katie and I got on great in Croatia, as we (almost) always do, it's just that family mealtimes with five people are even more competitive in terms of getting a word in edgeways, and I rather enjoy this constant shouting healthy dynamism. Maybe even more would be even better...

Oh yes, and on the subject of me and Katie - we had a wonderful moment together in Split, after petulantly refusing to accompany our parents to see the interior of a church and opting instead to stay outside in the glorious sunshine. (It was borne of an immediate but nonetheless remarkably firm conviction that we rather liked our own shoulders, thank you very much, and weren't about to cover them up without a more enticing incentive than, um, the interior of a church.) Yet the moment they went in without us a pagan alternative suddenly turned up outside, in the form of a bunch of toga-clad, crowd-pleasing ancient Romans. Hurrah! No matter how much gold was inside that church, in the coolness stakes our team totally won.



Also: mum, Katie and I went rafting, which was lots of fun...



...and included an optional rock-jumping stop. Now, before I conclude on a photo of said rock-jumping, I must say a word about Katie's sneakiness. Because there's also of photo of her jumping off the rock - a photo I won't be blogging, because it makes me look stupid by comparison - with her arms outstretched and a carefree, isn't-this-fun look on her face. Great. I, on the other hand, am clasping my life jacket like a fool. But, ladies and gentlemen, we were told to do this! Honest! Katie just abandoned health and safety in pursuit of a cooler photograph - it's her that you should judge