musingsponderingsandrants

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Category: travel

Sunbed Wars… — July 31, 2017

Sunbed Wars…

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Time for another holiday missive. I cannot quite believe it has been a year since my last holiday blogs from Portugal. Such gems as Wind Up and Why are there no Aspirin in the Jungle? Please do look them up. I have limited technology here in sunny (and windy) Fuerteventura and so I struggle to provide links. Oo actually I think I may have mastered it. Let’s hope so…

For those of you that remember the latter blog it dealt with the fact that Middlest and Youngest had developed raging ear infections from over pool use and the lengths we needed to go to sort that out. Well by way of background that happened again in October in this very hotel and we spent another day of our precious holiday at doctors and pharmacists.

And so I bought them earplugs and gromit bands to wear on this holiday. Needless to say that hasn’t gone down too well. It is somewhat of a battle to get them to wear them. I actually think they look kind of cool. I would post a picture but all photographic evidence is banned.

I am a lonely voice in favour of such a get up, even husband suggested “We should play it by ear”. Not only is that a dreadful pun but I am also not sure how that would work. Until “we had played it by ear” enough for an ear infection, or possibly two, to develop? What and then wear the gromit bands? After the fact. I pointed out that if that did occur he would be getting the taxi to the pharmacy in the next town and trying to get by in rudimentary Spanish. That was enough to get him to back down. My husband is legendary for his lack of linguistic ability. I once came back from a loo trip when we were in Gran Canaria and discovered him trying to order two pineapple juices by miming a pineapple. It has gone down in Harrison folk law. I intervened. Dos zumo du pina por favor? The look of relief on the poor waitresses face was a sight to behold. I am sure it has gone down in waitress folk law too…..

I also reminded the off spring of the night of agony they both suffered. Middlest on the sofa crying. The subsequent pool ban for the rest of the holiday. The increased pain on the return flight. Apparently all this is like labour pain. Forgotten conveniently by the next time. That has cost me quite dearly. I didn’t want it to cost them. Like many many things I do that appear mean and heartless (apparently) I am doing it for their own good.

So they are wearing them. I put my foot down. And as everyone knows I am the boss. I saw a bunch of pre pubescent Germans pouring all inclusive Fanta on their heads and diving straight into the pool yesterday. I rest my case….

Anyway this wasn’t supposed to be a blog about ear infections but as always I have got massively sidetracked.

No this is a blog about sun beds.

We arrived at midnight on Saturday evening after a traumatic trip which saw us nearly miss the flight due to the M25. Needless to say we didn’t fancy getting up too early on our first day. At about 7.30 then we wandered blearily down to breakfast. Early is a relative term with my kids.

My first inkling that something may be up was when I went onto the balcony to take in the view. The view consisted of a lot of middle aged men, many in Lycra  (can I go nowhere without mamils?) reserving platoons of sun beds. I shrugged it off. In October here we had wandered down after a leisurely breakfast (by 8.30) and still been able to sit in the shade, a must for my family two of whom are very pale skinned. One of those is a fully grown man who still believes he will get a tan, despite 43 years of evidence to the contrary. The other is Middlest who spends his holidays getting more and more freckly in an endearing but ultimately futile way tan wise.

Anyway after this particular leisurely breakfast (probably the best in our All Inclusive experiences with proper sausages and bacon that is so well cooked it cracks, the only way to eat bacon in my opinion. I do wish the continent could get its collective head around the need for cold milk with tea though, not hot milk or, worse, cream and provide tea pots and proper sized mugs. That might be just me of course) husband wandered down and could only find sunbeds in full sun and then they were sandwiched between the bins and the showers.

Nevermind we carried on undaunted. After lunch I happened to be passing a family with a small child vacating their beds under the shade and I pounced securing the beds with everything I was carrying; sun hat, one towel & my sun glasses. I toyed with removing my bikini top to secure the fourth bed such was my desperation for shade, sweat having formed on the back of my knees, but thought better of it. The resort is partly naturist but it isn’t really my style…I ran back to husband and we embarked on a change over procedure.

Despite this retreat to the shade for the latter part of the afternoon Middlest still got mild sun stroke as we were to find out at 11.30 pm when Eldest pounded on the door to advise that Middlest was vomiting copiously into, luckily, the toilet.

I resolved to find shady sun beds the next morning come what may.

Anyway at 07:00 hours I pulled on shorts and a tee shirt and joined the mamils reserving sun beds. I found five in the shade further from the activity pool than everyone wanted but not bad in my opinion.

I got chatting to an English man who was arranging his towels on the run of beds next to ours. My family find it odd that I will strike up a conversation with such people. I was about to spend the day lying approximately four inches from at least one member of his party. Getting on friendly terms seemed fair enough.

Whilst he had a fag and I tried not to stare at his sleeve tattoos we discussed the state of affairs which had apparently got worse in this, his second week of holiday. He had been unable to acquire beds any nearer to the activity pool and this got us to wondering what god awful time those in the prime spots had actually arisen at.

There is a rumour circulating that people are setting out towels the night before. They must be German surely? It is a risky strategy as the wind here is truly phenomenal. It is not our first holiday involving wind, as detailed in the aforementioned post Wind Up. In fact I am starting to wonder if my husband is actually seeking out windy locations, this being our third in a row. That Rugby World Cup hoody is back in action. It looks a bit out of date now but it is still very serviceable.

With regard to sun bed reserving I hold the shop partially responsible as they sell beach towel pegs to fasten your beach towel to your sun bed. I have seen a number of towels flapping kite like from their pegged mooring,  Those beach towels carry a €15 deposit, not sure I would risk it. I like JJ the overweight Bulgarian entertainment team member as much as the next woman but not enough to risk that kind of wonga. I will forsake laughing at people doing spin in the water to ensure I don’t lose €75.

My new friend was off on a couple of day trips in the forthcoming week and he was looking forward to the lie in. I had to agree. Of course there are signs up forbidding the reserving of sun beds, the management reserving the right to remove unattended articles. Of course these signs are totally ignored. And some of the more moral amongst my holidaying compatriots actually sit on the beds from seven am thus getting around this issue. In any event can you imagine the mountain of beach towels and lilos (a particularly risky sunbed saving article here in the force nine gale especially the ones shaped like lobsters whose claws seem to catch the wind very easily) and sun hats and random bags that would be created if the management did carry out their threat? Aqua spin would be highly likely to be called off whilst they sorted all that out annoying a huge amount of slightly over weight women. I am sure the management have thought better of it.

I wouldn’t mind so much except that a huge amount of these reserved sun beds do not get occupied until I am going in for lunch, maybe they should start a rota system?

In any event I have it better than my new found sun bed chum whose party consists of his 20 year old lad and his girlfriend (who was indeed the member I spent most of the day lying four inches from which was quite annoying as she was, well, 20 and therefore didn’t paint me in a particularly favourable light) his wife and sister in law  (overweight, unfortunate sun burn lines, tattoos that were possibly once attractive why couldn’t I have ended up next to her? ) and his 16 year old daughter. He doesn’t get a sunbed for her because she might not turn up all day, and he is British and so has a sense of decency about these things.

The reason I have it better is because he was off to await the forming of the a la carte dining queue which, he informed me, he had been unsuccessful in on a previous three occasions. He had a new strategy planned and was hopeful. I shall look out for him in the all you can eat buffet later. That is where we will be eating every night.

I imagine sun bed man (who of course I did not exchange anymore words with once our families had arrived, for that would be weird) would probably also choose the buffet too. During our chat he agreed with me that the food is great.

Especially the bacon.

Off to set my alarm. Good night.

 

 

 

Why Are There No Aspirin in the Jungle? — August 11, 2016

Why Are There No Aspirin in the Jungle?

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Because the parrots eat em all….

That is one of my all time favourite jokes. Along with What is yellow and dangerous? Shark infested custard.

Say the former out loud if the punch line escapes you.

Anyway we have reached the penultimate day of our holiday. Here in sunny Portugal. And today we will be spending a portion of our time searching out analgesics.

We did not rashly arrive without pain killers. I always pack a selection of drugs which includes paracetomol, nurofen, Migraleve, Immodium, rehydration salts and insect bite cream. The digestive portion of this list is possibly a hangover from my early forays abroad when water and food was less reliable than it is now. None of us have had the squits on any of our family trips abroad. But of course if I didn’t pack them then we would all come down with raging diarrhoea. (I have tried to avoid using this word as it is impossible to spell. And I can’t even get near enough for auto correct to guess at it. I had to look it up…) Probably simultaneously and explosively.

So I had pain killers covered. And I had liquid versions for the kids. But we have run out. And here are the reasons why.

On our first day, which was cool, as I did mention in Wind Up, we went along to ‘family football’. There were a few reasons for this. One the football pitch is the only amenity on this entire resort that our villa is close to. Everything else is at least a kilometre away. Breakfast. The sea. The pool that we like. Reception. Lunch venues. I didn’t wear my FitBit here. Which was a mistake. Merely getting to the dining hall racks up 1000 steps. I would have been quids in.

Secondly the hour long daily session is free. Not much else is. We paid a small fortune to come here for two weeks. And we are paying amother small fortune staying here. We thought taking advantage of the free activities wise.

Three it sounded fun. Family football implies a safe, fun, non competitive activity for all the, well, family.

Four. My kids love football.

So off we went. Relishing the around twenty steps to the pitch. Which is a sandy all weather type surface.

Well the Harrrisons (for that is us) formed a team and also took on a random Irish person to help out. It is safe to say that ‘family’ football is a slight misnomer. There  were plenty of lads and dads. But also a few random teenagers with and without footwear, an extremely competitive coach, and myself and Youngest the only people on the pitch without a penis. The dads where without doubt all failed Ronaldos living out their broken dreams thrashing the pants off four year olds and a woman of a certain age. Go them. I am sure they felt better about themselves after they had Pana’d that toddler.

We did OK though. We play a lot together so know each other’s strengths. OK OK I have bigged this up. Daddy and the kids play a lot together. I watch a lot of them playing so know their strengths. At one point I heard a member of a team who were sitting out mention that we were all a family and had chemistry! I puffed up a bit at this and toe punted the ball to the opposition so destroying any credibility I had built up. Anyway we did OK. Won 2 lost 2.

I think it was during the second match that husband fell over a teenager (I think the teenager in question may have been the one playing in bare feet, nutter) and landed awkwardly on his foot. I didn’t really notice because I was busy defending at the time but it did strike me as slightly odd that husband played in goal for the last two matches. Thus loosing all chance of nutmeging a four year old.

Anyway we came off at the end. Once I had got my breath back and stopped feeling sick I noticed he was limping. I asked if he was OK. He said not because he thought he may have re- broken the foot bone he broke several years ago when he fell down the stairs after stepping on an Iggle Piggle sippy cup I had ‘haphazardly’ left at the top of the stairs. It has long been a bone (excuse the pun) of contention in our marriage as to whose fault that accident really was. Was the cup left ‘haphazardly’ at the top of the stairs or tucked neatly into the banIster during a middle of the night ill child rescue mission? Undertaken by yours truly. But whatever, the outcome was the same. A broken foot bone.

This time, however, I could not be blamed as I had been on the wing when he fell over the bare footed teenager.

So my husband began popping the analgesics with alarming regularity. And he also began limping those 1000 steps to breakfast.

The issue was compounded a few days later when we rashly agreed to go back to ‘family’ football. We didn’t enjoy it quite as much this time. Eldest dumped us to pair up with a teenage lad and his team (I think, ironically, the teenager husband had fallen over on day one) earning him the nick name Judas. The remaining four of us joined up with some Germans and a couple of teenagers from Wandsworth (who clearly thought that girls can’t play as they tackled Youngest mercilessly all afternoon despite her being on their team and actually a decent player) and battled it out against ferocious opposition who were clearly bent on winning at all costs.

I took a ball to the face which broke the arm off my sunglasses and left my cheek smarting and tears in my eyes. Involuntary tears. It bloody hurt. Even more ironically it had come off the ‘broken’ foot of my husband as he limped in the goal mouth clearing balls in a way I can only decribe as ‘haphazardly’. I left to walk the twenty steps to our house to retrieve my actual glasses so I could see anything at all.  There was no way I was giving up on the match and giving the extremely sexist coach (who I had heard saying, and I quote, “don’t worry it is the team with the woman and girl in next”) the satisfaction of seeing ‘the woman’ ‘ball-in-faced’ off the pitch.

We decided after the session to go to the nearest pool, one that we hadn’t ventured to before, to cool off. Youngest jumped straight in and declared it deeper than the other pools. I was dubious as I was sure all of them were 1.2 meters deep. Husband jumped in full throttle and landed heavily on both heels. Further aggravating his foot issues. He was now limping on both feet. Although I guess a limp on both feet just means you walk extremely slowly everywhere.

The lack of sunglasses saw me get two migraines over the next two days one of which was brought about by staring futilely across the vast Atlantic Ocean trying to spot dolphins for an hour and a half and mistaking every blinding crest of a wave for a dorsal fin. We were left disappointed. And me migrainey.

Just as husband’s limp was improving slightly both Youngest and Middlest developed earache. There is a nurse on site but being British we decided ‘not to bother the nice medical staff’ with our minor health concerns and just used analgesics in liquid form to ease the increasing discomfort.

Yesterday the waves were up at our resort’s beach and so we headed down there for our third body boarding/ bobbing up and down in the waves session. I managed to wipe out only the once. Unfortunately I did it much more spectacularly than my wipe outs in the previous two sessions, which had merely resulted in bruises to my ribs and thighs and sand grazes to various limbs, by banging my head quite forcefully on the sand and jarring my neck.

It was whilst trying to deal with the considerable discomfort that thus ensued as my neck seized up during the evening that our lack of pain killers got very acute. I did consider ‘necking’ a few gulps of Calpol but cognisant of the ear ache situation didn’t dare to for fear of leaving my aurally challenged children dry.

I gingerly made my way upstairs this morning to brew a morning cuppa and came across Middlest on the sofa groaning in pain and complaining because he had got no sleep at all due to his ear.

Enough was enough it was time to prevail upon the nice nurse. Who was very nice but unable to help as nurses in Portugal are not equipped with orthoscopes. For the looking down of ears.

So Middlest, Youngest and I have had a fun day going to the doctors in Praia du Luz (which the doctor reminded me was where Madeline McCann went missing, you’d think they would want tourists to forget that), paying a small fortune in the pharmacy and eating a celebratory antibiotic crepe. Praia du Luz is spectacularly beautiful and we would probably never have seen it if it hadn’t been for that ear ache. So that was a silver lining.

We are back now. The kids are banned from the pool. I have to administer four types of medicine on a mind bogglingly complicated schedule.

Oh and whilst I was at that pharmacy I bought more paracetomol for husband’s feet and my neck. He will probably wash his down with a gin sling. If I drank I might do the same but I will settle instead for a cup of Yorkshire tea.

Thank god that hasn’t run out. That would be a bone fide disaster.

 

 

 

Oh I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside… — January 1, 2016

Oh I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside…

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We are currently on holiday. I believe I began a post like this before. I think it was Greece is the Word. I would link you to it but I am on holiday. And therefore I am unable to do so. As I lack the IT resources.

Suffice to say that if you do find that post the view from the window on this holiday is not quite the same.

We are spending the week in a house on the Kent coast.

Some of my readership hail from far flung, even tropical places. And so therefore I need to perhaps explain what a holiday by the seaside in England is like in January.

One word springs to mind. Cold.

In the UK we have been experiencing a very mild winter this year. When we left our home it was 15 degrees. Really odd. It should be around ten degrees cooler than that. Anyhoo it has been unseasonably warm. So when I printed off my ‘Family Holiday in the U.K.’ Packing list I nearly discounted the thermals section as well as the wet suit and sun hat section.

But then I remembered we were going to the coast. And I packed them anyway. Thank god.

However warm it is in the UK it is reliably a lot colder by the sea. Especially when that sea is the North Sea. I never go to the British seaside without my woolly hat. Ever. Even in June. Because I will get earache without it. To go with the facial exfoliation provided free by the blowing sand.

In theory it seems a wonderful idea. A break by the sea off season. One envisages bracing walks along the coast. I lasted precisely ten minutes on the sands today watching my offspring roll around after a rugby ball before the cold and the fear that they might tackle each other into a pile of dog muck got the better of me. So I left to explore the slightly less windy town.

And there you notice that other thing about most English seaside towns. They have an air of neglect. Which is even more apparent in the winter. Most of the shops remain closed. The lack of sun and people shows up the peeling paint and rusty balustrades. I feel sorry for these places.

In most you can see the grandeur that was there in the height of the British tourist heyday. Before cheap flights lured us all away to sunnier climes. The Art Deco hotel facades. The huge train stations that would have received thousands of holiday makers each summer. The pleasure grounds. The piers. The boating lakes. But often these wonders have been blighted by neighbouring 60s planning monstrosities. By a lack of up keep. By graffiti. By the insufficient numbers of punters.

And then there are seagulls. Nough said. They pinch your chips and poo on everything. I hate them. Flying vermin.

But then despite all this such places have an appeal. We like 2p amusement arcades where an hour’s fun can be had for a couple of quid.

We like watching the New Year’s Day nutters swimming in the sea…weird.

We like the fish and chips.

We like the ice cream parlours.

We like building castles and shell hunting and chapped lips.

We like crabbing off abandoned piers and rock pooling.

We like looking round tacky souvenir shops.

We like drinking proper tea out of styrofoam cups.

We like coming back and getting cosy.

So, yeah, the Med is great. But so is the North Sea.

If you dress up proper.

 

 

Are we nearly there yet? — August 16, 2015

Are we nearly there yet?

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Today the kids and I were faced with a long drive to the in laws. We are unfortunate enough to be at least a four hour drive away from three of the four ‘sets’ of the kids’ grandparents. Before you ask it’s complicated.

One set are in the South West and therefore in reality at least 5 hours away. The other two ‘away’ sets are in the North East and I have done it in three and a half hours with a tail wind and no roadworks or average speed cameras. Today it took six, a combination of incessant rain and Friday traffic.

Before we left the kids had their usual argument about which DVDs to watch in the car. As I have three kids and two DVD player holders Middlest has to share. He can share with either of the other two. But of course they never want to watch the same DVD, or they all want to watch the same DVD at the same time. If there is a way to fall out about it they will.

Anyway once I had donned my light blue peacekeeper helmet and sorted it all out (I think I threatened to leave the DVD players behind, or did I threaten to leave the kids behind? Either way it worked) we departed.

The radio doesn’t work when the DVD players are on. They seem to interfere with each other. And I have still not unpacked my CD collection since the house move and so I had a choice of Def Leppard or The Wheels on the Bus collection. As such, once Def Leppard had gone round twice, I had plenty of silence and traffic jam to consider how it was when I was young.

We did a lot of train travel as a kid. But also plenty of long distance car journeys.

My first recollections are of the bright green Ford Cortina. Three door. Rear windows of a triangular nature which popped open rather than rolled down. No air con. No radio.

My mum was quite enlightened for the time. We had four point harnesses attached to some part of the car’s innards. We had a cuboid block of foam to sit on so we could see out of the tiny windows. She had covered them in hand made fabric cases, mine was an orange, yellow and brown seventies flower concoction and my brother had a blue and white stripe toweling  type material. He used to dig little tunnels in his foam so that under the cover it looked a lot like an ants’ nest.

We drove quite often from Mersyside to the South West to visit grandparents and for our annual hotel holiday in South Devon. The trips were interminable. My dad had recorded some music onto tape for us to help pass the time. Our favourite one had Play School’s Bang on a Drum album on one side. And for some, probably educational, reason The Carnival of the Animals by Saint Seans on the other. Yes it is classical music aimed more at children than the norm but still, no words, nothing to sing along to. Low on entertainment value, certainly after its first airing.

Due to having to use a portable tape player which ran on the largest cylindrical batteries available we were not allowed to use the rewind or forward wind buttons. As the batteries ran out. So once the fun of Bang on a Drum had been had we were subjected to the opposing side in order to hear it again. I think the other tape had Peter and the Wolf on…..that was even worse. I still can’t listen to The Swan without picturing the M5.

My mum was a master of car word games. I Spy, pub bingo, The Minister’s Cat, I went to Market and I bought. We played all these a lot. But I guess even her patience must have run out at some point on each journey as I remember a lot of watching rain drops roll down the windows and playing the ‘raindrop racing game’ in my head.

I did a lot of staring out of the window to combat my horrendous travel sickness. There was a metal potty in the car just for me. And so I could never read or do puzzles or the like. Even with the window staring I was often ill. On an interminable trip to Kent from Mersyside I was sick about 14 times. This was in the days before the M25 so I am not even sure how we got round London but I do remember it taking a very long time…..indeed.

My brother eventually built up quite a collection of Pocketeers (see above). They helped him pass the time. But not me, too vomit inducing.

Sometime after we moved south we transferred to our first Fiat Mirafiori. PHF181T. This had a radio. But it was permanently tuned to Radio Four. I remember the rebellion my brother and I led during our teenage years to be allowed to listen to the chart show on one Sunday evening drive home.

There were some memorable incidents. One of the rear windows my mother was finally persuaded to pop open for us on one boiling hot drive which then promptly fell out onto the service station car park floor. My brother flapping his jumper out of the car window (this must have been in the Mirafiori days) to get rid of a strangely  colourful bug and then letting go. And my dad then sprinting across all the lanes of the motorway from the hard shoulder to retrieve it. Can you even imagine any day when that would even be possible now without being flattened? My brother and I sitting on those foam cushions on the roadside to eat our picnic and being joined by a gaggle of hungry geese.

But generally we were bored. Witless. Even so I don’t remember bugging my mum much. What compliant children we were. That bit of the M5 where it splits onto two levels was always a sign that we were nearly there and it could never come soon enough.

So I have very little sympathy for my kids’ DVD squabbling. They don’t know they are born. Seriously.

Flights of Fancy — July 28, 2015

Flights of Fancy

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airplane

So our holiday is over. Well and truly. Although we are still in Greece, sitting in the airport waiting out a two hour and rising delay. Of course we had to be here two hours before the scheduled time to clear the security checks etc. which took about 5 minutes. And so we are here for at least 4 hours. Plenty of time to write a little rant.

Apparently we are flying back with a carrier called Titan Air. I have never heard of them. According to the British Airways hastily printed hand out at check in they are renowned for their quality of service. Hmmm we shall see. The hand out also suggested that if they hadn’t leased this Titan aircraft the whole flight would have been cancelled. So I guess the lesser of two evils. Although another night in my luxury hotel wouldn’t have been the end of the world. If they weren’t fully booked.

Infuriatingly the Easy Jet flight we eschewed for the better service of BA left on time. Although I still wouldn’t have wanted that sprint up the Tarmac…

Flying really is the most unreliable form of transport. I find it infuriating. There seems to be so much that can go wrong. This is by no way our worst delay. And by no way the worst incident I have heard of.

Last October when we flew to the States we were taxi-ing down the runway. I was gripping tightly to the armrests mentally preparing for the hell that is take off when we stopped. Apparently a warning light had come on. I guess it isn’t a good idea to ignore them, like I do with my car, before a 9 hour flight across the Atlantic. So of course it had to be investigated.

It took three hours for that light to be extinguished. A part had to be shuttled in from Vrigin’s parts store to be replaced. By which time my offspring had exhausted their film and video game capacity. The next nine hours of actual flying were tortuous rounds of rummy and toilet trips. Although that was preferable to having to stay behind for a day and miss my first breakfast with Donald Duck.

On the way back from Kos we got stuck on the runway. Again. With no electrics. This time they had a broken seat and a full plane. And were therefore one seat short. Increasingly desperate tannoy announcements asked for flight trained individuals who could sit in the spare cabin crew seat (presumably they would not have been expected to serve nuts or explain life vests) and finally for people willing to stay behind. I am not sure of the outcome but we eventually left. And the air conditioning started up again and saved us from the heat that had built up in the large tin can sitting on a runway in 40 degree heat.

I have more but would hate to bore you. I think my worst delay was 8 hours. At least this was in an airport. Nearly all my delays have been on the return leg (except for that Virgin Atlantic experience) of our holidays. It is safe to say that British airports are considerably more fun to spend time in than some overseas. The one I spent eight hours in was literally a hut. I think it was a Canary or a Balearic. I can’t remember. Luckily it was BC. Spending time being delayed alone or with one’s spouse is bearable, doing it with three fractious kids is a million times worse.

Anyway we are down to 2 hours to wait. I have written this entry over a 2 hour period which has also included loo trips, knock out whist and refreshment foraging outings.

I am now being pressed to play Strip Jack Naked, perhaps the most infuriating card game of all time, so I will end. Apparently the kids ‘have nothing to do’ Despite the free wifi. And kindles. And each other. I am evidently a necessary distraction. So off I go to fulfil my primary role.

Pray we all get home. Thanks.

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