Anything, Anywhere But Under Sufferance

It seems appropriate to post this here, I wrote this for a travel website a while back now and I thought those of us going away on holiday shortly may enjoy reading it, or not as the case may be... FOR THE SAFETY NOT SANITY OF PASSENGERS Going away on a long awaited holiday can be amongst the highlights of the year. Once the trip has been sorted you count the months, weeks and then days until the day of departure finally dawns amidst a sea of hastily packed suitcases and excited chatter. Often this can be the best part of the holiday, knowing that the day to day drudgery of work can be forgotten for a week or two and that stretching out in front of you is two weeks of much anticipated bliss. You cannot fail to be in a good mood as you fling your suitcase into the taxi and sit amongst the excited babbling of friends and loved ones. And then you get to the airport. Douglas Adams once remarked that you seldom hear the comparative “as beautiful as an airport” for in as much as these gat...

As you may now, I play golf. A lot. Usually quite badly. Occasionally the golfing gods may be kind and permit me a decent round or two, but this is far from certain whenever I tee the ball up, take out a club and attempt to thump the ball down the fairway (or hook/slice it into the trees, which is more usually the result of my efforts) My friend Ian and I have been playing a fair bit this year. Losing weight and the resulting improvement in my back, has resulted in me replacing my trips to the fridge and sweetie shop, with trips to the course and driving range. This is indubitably more expensive, but while it is costing me £s it is saving me lbs. We've been playing most weeks now, sometimes twice a week, since April/May time and we've both seen improvements in our game. For me that means I am shooting less in the 90's and more in the 80's, on one memorable occasion a 79. Ian's improvement has been even more dramatic. But to put that into context I have to expl...

I was at the Driving Range the other evening, paying for my son and his friend to hit golfballs aimlessly about while Ian and I gazed on in the forlorn hope that we may get a turn (Out of 100 balls, I hit about 10). When our gentle practising was interrupted by the sound of a car being revved to high heaven and then spinning its tyres in the car park. Now, I'm pretty certain that the R&A in their laws of the game of Golf, suggest that revving a car engine while people are practising is pretty poor form and liable to a two stroke penalty. One with the club across your windscreen and the second seeing your putter wrapped around the idiot drivers head. I really don't understand this macho posturing in cars. There's so many ways to do it too. You can wind your window down and play music so loud that you frighten the wildlife, not just in your local town but often in Norway. You can rev your engine aggressively at traffic lights and glance across at someone else in the car n...

Here's a thought for you. I don't like alcohol very much. Let's not misunderstand this. I occasionally enjoy a cold beer (much rarer now since I've been asking the fat fairies to harvest the lard from my arse), a glass of wine or maybe, if pushed a Southern Comfort or nice Single Malt whisky. But I could quite happily give this up forever tomorrow. The problem is, I think, that I don't really understand the subtle differences that so many people witter on about. Let's start with wine for example. If you are particularly unfortunate, you may catch that god-awful irritating, plum-in-the-mouth frizzy haired bint, Jilly Goulden wittering on about "the bouquet of fresh Thyme and Mint echoing through the velvety undertone of Saffron Walden..." or some such nonsense... So I try it and think... "Umm... It's wine." That is my level of understanding. Wine comes in three flavours, Red (which is purple), White (which is yellow) and Rose (which is Pin...

Around a year ago, as I stood in the school playground, keeping myself to myself and wondering just how many people lack clothes in sufficient quantity to force them to come to school in pyjama's, yet still have enough smelly make up, perfume and hair products on to floor a herd of Bison at a distance of three miles, one of my children's teachers came up to me and asked if I would be interested in becoming a parent governor at the school. "Is this because I am a bit gobby?" I asked. Instead of just agreeing and saying "Well, no fecker else wanted to do it and you look miserable enough to possibly say yes..." she was very nice to me, so I agreed and filled in the forms and within a few weeks, I was at my first meeting with absolutely no idea what was going on or being said or why governmental agencies have multiple orgasms over using acronyms for absolutely anything. By my second meeting, I looked bewildered enough to be appointed Vice Chair after the current...

DAY SIX THE BEACH The following morning we had all risen from our beds, breakfasted and gone about our daily ablutions with the general acceptance that today was going to be a “rest day”. This is a euphemism which basically means that we don’t do any driving on that day and we stay sat on our arses doing stuff around the house, or in the gardens or down on the beach. This was supposed to be what the holiday was about for all of us. While holidays where you go to places and do all kinds of crazy things every day may appeal to some, we all lead such hectic lives (apart from me who 'sits on my computer playing all day') that sometimes we just want to get away from it all, and that included doing things. Rest was the byword for the week and it seemed like finally, today we’d all get the chance to unwind in our own differing ways. By mid morning it was fairly evident what this was going to entail for the majority. My Dad had his nose in Kris’s DS and was busy playing some form of ...

DAY FIVE CLIFDEN 11am In all the kerfuffle over Pepsi (who was now showing signs of great improvement) we had forgotten to go into Clifden the day before to look for a wetsuit for Kris. He had braved the bitter cold of the sea with Jess and Josh again the previous day but only briefly and my mum, seeing how the wetsuits Jess and Josh had allowed them to stay in the water a good while longer, decided that they’d pick one up for Kris. However Pepsi’s veterinary visit had taken precedence that day and for reasons of canine concern and general bone idleness (we were on holiday), Kris’s trip to the shop was postponed until this morning. My mum and dad went with him along with Alex. They gave the shop with the expensive wetsuits a wide berth and headed into the sports shop that had been closed on the Bank Holiday Monday and quickly found some wetsuits that were comparatively cheap at 40 Euro’s, which were still four times as expensive as the ones we bought in Keswick, but given the price ...