A-Z Challenge 2025 - I is for Idling

Hmm I think I must have struggled to find an I word for nonsense or waffling when I was preparing this post.  

However I am an expert on "Idling".  Of course I call it reading, or knitting, or doing the New York Times crossword or just "doom scrolling" as I've seen it described on Facebook or Instagram.

Thankfully I don't do X or TikTok and I did delete several games from my phone at the start of Lent otherwise I'm not sure when I'd find time to do anything productive.  

I suppose some people would even see blogging as idling but like all the other things listed above these are things I enjoy.  I also forgot to add doing a jigsaw in there.  Something else that is preferable to housework, laundry or any other chores that might need doing.  

But of course my idling time is limited so let's get to the I countries:

• Iceland
• India
• Indonesia
• Iran
• Iraq
• Ireland
• Israel
• Italy

Although I don't officially have a theme but to have something linking my posts I thought I'd see how many countries in the World I've visited or might visit.

Of these I've been to Ireland and Italy.

I went to Italy not long after my Hubby and I got together with a group of friends to the ski resort in Cervinia.  We had a great time and lovely weather.  Bright and sunny most days, but there was plenty of snow.  Of course I was a lot younger, and fitter then so even though I was a total beginner I was soon getting the hang of it and enjoying myself.

I've been to Ireland 3 times so far.  The first time Hubby and I took the kids with us to visit his brother and family who were staying on the outskirts of Dublin.  His brother was there for a year with his job.  We went during the February half-term break for the kids and had the worst crossing on a ferry EVER.  The sea was rough, the ferry had a problem with its stablilisers and a lot of people, hubby and the kids included, were turning the colour of shamrocks and being physically ill.  We did have a nice week even with bad weather and one child with what was probably an ear infection but I do not recommend going by ferry during the winter months!

Our second visit was to attend a work colleague's wedding actually 2 colleagues who met at work and fell in love.  All say aahhh.  We combined it with a holiday and had a lovely time travelling around the coast before ending up in Dublin for the wedding.   This was during the summer break so the weather was soo much better.

And my final trip was to my friend Ana's home on the west coast.  Our "Ladies Lunch" group (4 of us) all made the trip back in 2022.  I blogged about it here.  We had a lot of laughs.

I can't realistically see myself visiting any of the other countries on the list except maybe Iceland - providing its volcano isn't erupting!  It would be nice to see more of Italy though, maybe in the warmer weather.

That's 9 out of 197 countries then - the list I'm working from can be found here.

And 9 out of 26 letters done.