My Mother… Landlady Extraordinaire

by

Regular readers may recall my mother’s role as a student landlady, in which she believes all the tenants are simple (see My Mother… and the Simple Students). She regularly peddles round on her bicycle to impart advice such as, ‘Put the bins out – and don’t forget to lock the back gate!’, and ‘Drinking at this hour? It’s a wonder you ever get any studying done!’.

After the departure of last year’s batch of simpletons, my mother set about her annual summer cleaning of our student house.

But as she hoovered away at the carpet with her trusty ‘little vac’ (the Dyson rendered ‘utterly useless’), she kept feeling holes in the floor of the lounge: holes that my father had been blithely ignoring for the last few years (bringing with it a very literal meaning to brushing them under the carpet).

Finally pulling back the carpet, my mother was alarmed to find large areas of the floorboards has been devoured by a particularly voracious strain of woodworm – a grim discovery that brought about her new saying of the summer, ‘The floorboards were like WEETABIX!’

Woodworm

Rather than immediately consult with a woodworm expert, my 65-year-old mother decided to venture into the bowels of the house herself, squeezing down a tiny hatch she found in the corner of the lounge. On her hands and knees, she managed to crawl, caterpillar-style, the entire length of the underbelly of the property, to inspect the extent of the damage with a torch.

Re-appearing, covered in soot, my mother – the pot-holing pensioner – claimed that no-body over 5ft2 would even make it down there.

My father’s role in this was to investigate a solution. He apparently managed to operate Google and read up on some super-strength woodworm killer, although given the scale of his internet ineptitude (see My Parents… and the World Wide Web), I’m not sure how this was possible.

After weighing the job up at length, the parents decided it probably was time to call in a joiner, who arrived to replace the Weetabix floorboards and told my mother he had replaced part of a joist underneath the house too.

Not content with just taking his word for it, my mother then ventured back down the hatch and slithered underneath the house – torch poised – to see if he really had replaced a joist. Luckily for him, he had.

This September brought with it a new batch of students and further parental eccentricity. I told my mother that I had organised for two Polish girls to move in and she was to meet them at the house on Friday.

My father began making noises about collecting them in person from Liverpool airport. He said it wouldn’t be any trouble. But, in the end, they settled for a ‘meet and greet’ service at Preston train station, and a personal taxi service to the student house. Contracts duly signed, normal landlords would probably wish them well and be on their way.

But not the parents. Oh no… their concierge service continued. When I phoned my mother to ask how it had gone, she said that they had pretty much spent the whole day with the Polish girls.

Apparently, they drove them to the University library and actually waited in the car for them while they registered. The girls were then ‘terribly hungry’ – hadn’t eaten for 17 hours, in fact. Ever the hostess, my mother toyed with the idea of taking them back to their house for dinner but instead she settled for dropping them off at Aldi to do some food shopping. She thought they’d feel at home in Aldi, she said, because of its continental connections.

In the midst of this madness, my father – the chauffeur – had produced one of his infamous maps with a highlighted route and instructions on how to get from the house to the University on foot.

They left the Polish girls happily ensconced back at the house, munching on an Aldi pizza and watching X-Box (I think she meant X-Factor).

At the end of this tale, I asked my mother what the Polish girls were like.

‘One of them seems quite sharp,’ she said. ‘Pidgin English – but definitely all there.

‘But the other one is terribly feeble. She barely spoke.’

I just knew what was coming next.

‘In fact, she seemed a bit… simple.’

The Hunk at the Gym

by

After listening to Lipo Liza‘s woeful tales of extreme fat removal and dodging the advances of omnipresent Big Grey Man, it seemed only fair that I should finally get a new gym ‘buddy’ who was a bit easier on the eye.

My latest gym friend is a bit of a hunk – a young hunk, in fact – but with a beard. Yep, a beard. Not that weird goaty thing that Brad Pitt grew; I’m thinking more of a bristly Ben Affleck in the film Argo.

photo-87

You know when you catch someone’s eye several times by accident or suddenly clock that you’ve been vacantly staring at them for some time? That’s what happened with The Bearded One last month. I was on a cross trainer directly opposite him and realised I had been staring in his general direction for quite a while, as my legs peddled away.

I then started to think, ‘Oh no, MAYBE he thinks I’m staring at him because I fancy him. Which I don’t of course (having only eyes for the husband). Except now, I’m acting like I DO fancy him.’

My friend Andrea and I have a name for this: it’s called Toy Soldier Syndrome (the name is a long story). It’s basically where you become convinced that someone THINKS that you fancy them so you start acting flustered and coquettish around them – even though you definitely DO NOT fancy them at all (kind of a weird self-fulfilling prophecy).

After a few minutes, I stole a quick glance back at The Bearded One to ascertain the state of play. As soon as my eyes rested on his, he smiled straight back at me!

I went bright red.

The Bearded One then dismounted from his bike and, despite there being many available cross-trainers, he curiously stepped onto the one right next to me! I was so flustered that I hastily fled the cross-trainer completely, cheeks flaming. This silly non-event was made worse by the fact that the husband was obliviously lifting weights, just several metres away.

The following week, I whipped into Marks and Spencers at my usual gallop and was just striding purposefully towards a Super Whole Food Salad, when a voice said in my ear, ‘You won’t need a cross trainer to work that off!

Cripes… it was him. Bearded and besuited.

‘I’m on a healthy kick,’ I squeaked, immediately going a nice shade of beetroot. ‘I’m going on holiday tomorrow.’

‘Me too!’ he exclaimed, a youthful glint in his eye. ‘I’m going to Ibiza. My girlfriend’s parents have a boat there.’

Ah, a girlfriend. Phew.

‘I’m going to Croatia with my husband,’ I said, sounding like a prim housewife. And immediately thinking, ‘Oh no, he probably now thinks I’m some desperate old housewife with a crush on him.’

‘See you at the gym,’ he said.

‘Defo,’ I squeaked.

I scurried off to join the queue, scooping up a pack of Percy Pig sweets on the way.

I have a fairly serious problem with Percy Pig and Haribos. About twice a week, I purchase a pack at a petrol station or supermarket – and then gluttonously tip the whole lot into my mouth – in one go. I probably need to see a therapist – shortly followed by a dentist.

tumblr_mb6jnuq7Zr1rogxwbo1_500

I dashed to the car, clambered behind the wheel and before you could say ‘Super Whole Food Salad’, I had rammed the whole pack of Percy Pigs straight into my mouth – just in time for The Bearded One to be passing by.

He smiled at me through the car window in a slightly bemused manner and gave a departing wave. I attempted to smile back but my cheeks were bulging like a giant gerbil.

‘Oh great,’ I thought, ‘I just told The Bearded One that I was on a health kick and then he just saw me gorging on a bag of Percy Pig sweets in a most uncivilised manner.’

I vowed to have a month off from the gym.

Seen But Not Heard

by

My friend’s wedding in London has left me completely speechless: Not speechless in the ‘awestruck’ sense (although it was a ruddy good do); I mean speechless in the ‘I’ve completely lost my voice and can only communicate through exaggerated hand gestures’ kind of way.

The day had begun like all wedding days do for the husband and I: immensely stressed and late as ever. The husband spent the morning haring around the city centre on an ill-advised and futile mission to seek out some tan-coloured shoes to go with his new suit, while I was anxiously checking my watch every five minutes as my hair was laboriously blow-dried into a Betty Draper bob.

Flustered and out of breath, we both convened at the train station, only to find that the 10.45 to London had been cancelled. We never mean to be late to weddings but circumstances always seem to conspire against us.

After much stress, involving further rail-related delays, attempting to get dressed in a poky train toilet cubicle (note: avoid at all costs), and a convoluted taxi ride through the back streets of Marylebone, we miraculously managed to arrive at the venue five minutes ahead of the bride – a record for us. (At the last wedding we attended, we missed the ceremony altogether and had to lurk in the bar before merging seamlessly with the exiting guests and enthuse convincingly about what a beautiful ceremony it had been).

But as soon as I opened my mouth at the reception and released a hoarse ‘hello’, my friend Ellie said, ‘Oh my God Palms, What’s wrong with your voice? You sound like Marge Simpson!’

She was right. I spent the rest of the reception croaking my way through conversations, while people visibly recoiled, hoping not to catch my laryngeal lurgy.

By 4pm, my Marge Simpson rasp had been reduced to an inaudible whisper. The people on either side of me at the wedding breakfast table had long since grown tired of having a one-sided conversation with a mute – and ceased communication completely.

I attempted to converse with a friend’s husband opposite me but midway through my miming act (I think I was attempting to explain my preference for stilton cheese over brie using lots of thumbs up – dull by anyone’s standards), his eyes glazed over and he simply turned around and struck up a conversation with someone else.

That left only the husband, who was forced to carry on my tiresome game of charades through marital obligation rather than any genuine desire. I tried to mouth, ‘How’s your chicken?’, while flapping my arms in what I thought was a good impression of a chicken. The husband looked baffled. After three attempts, I ended up typing ‘How’s your chicken?’ on my phone and passing it to him. He peered at my message curiously and then said, ‘Good’. It seemed like an awful lot of effort for a one-word reply.

photo-89

By evening, I had become nothing but a silent witness to the continuing celebrations. All I could do was smile like a simpleton, while making over-the-top throat-slitting motions and shrugging in a slightly demented manner if anyone ventured near me.

My friend Al, never one to pull any punches, summed my predicament up as this: ‘You’re the muted old woman who gets plonked in the corner. No-one wants to speak to you. You’ve basically become… irrelevant.’

Thanks Al.

It had been a brilliant day but by 10pm, I was too poorly and weary to continue. I signalled to the bar manager whether he might be able to order a taxi for me (luckily, there’s a universal signal for telephone – it involves holding your hand to your ear and arranging your fingers like a receiver).

But before I could say ‘Marcel Marceau’ – let alone goodbye to anyone – he had hailed a black cab with one click of his fingers and bundled the husband and I out of the fire exit and into the pouring rain (probably relieved to see the back of me, after I kept requesting mugs of hot water for my Lemsip).

Tucked up in bed back at the hotel and sipping my tenth Lemsip of the day, I was unable to utter a single syllable.

The husband, meanwhile, had never looked so happy.

Curse of the Cankles

by

I’ve got a problem with my ankles.

I went on Google, typed in ‘pain at back of ankles’ – and diagnosed myself with Acute Achilles Tendonitis. It’s basically a serious-sounding name for puffed up ankles.

The reason my ankles have puffed up is because I’ve been attempting to walk/run/trot 20,000 steps a day. This madness began when I acquired a Jawbone UP band, which you wear around your wrist to chart your activity during the day – from calories burned, hours slept and the amount of steps you complete.

photo-101

An average active human should be walking around 10,000 steps a day. But being the competitive type, I wasn’t happy with a mere 10,000 – so I rather ambitiously set my target to double it.

The problem with attempting to do 20,000 steps a day is that despite running 5km on the treadmill, sweating it out on the cross trainer for half an hour, and then spending the rest of the day galloping up and down the stairs at work, by the time I get home, I’m still about 3,000 steps short of my target.

This has meant that most evenings, the husband had landed back from work to find me pacing around the living room like a deranged Duracell bunny.

Another feature on the UP band app is that you can add friends who also have this step-counting device. I only have one friend: Anna. I can see how many hours sleep she gets, what she been eating and – most importantly – how many steps she does in a day.

It’s all rather competitive and, if I’m being perfectly honest, a little bit stalker-ish.

I was quite happily charging around for about three weeks, revelling in the knowledge that I was one if the top steppers in the UK (and beating Anna’s steps on a daily basis), until I woke up one day and realised I could barely walk. My ankles had seized up.

My wails of, ‘I’ve got cankles on my ankles!’ were met by complete indifference from the husband, who has long been impervious to my hypercondria.

Incidentally, I haven’t got cankles on my ankles. I didn’t even know what cankles were but the rhyme seemed to add a certain seriousness to my situation.

(I then googled ‘cankles’ and realised to my horror that it’s a condition where the calf meets the ankle without tapering at all. In short, your legs resemble those giant inflatable tubes they put down the sides of a ten-pin bowling lane for beginners. Thankfully, this isn’t an affliction I’ve been cursed with after all).

photo-92

However, when I casually mentioned that my Achilles’ tendon might be the source of the problem, the husband put down his New Scientist magazine and suddenly looked serious.

‘If it’s the Achilles, you need to stop exercising immediately,’ he said gravely – probably having horrific visions of spending the next 50 years pushing me around in a bath chair, while I bark orders at him.

‘If your Achilles snaps, it will be VERY serious,’ he added.

So there we have it: I can’t go to the gym. I can’t pound the pavements watching my steps rack up. I can’t canter up the stairs at work, two at a time, thinking, ‘steps, steps, glorious steps’.

No. All I can do now is meekly hobble round like a stiff-ankled sloth, knowing that – if I’m lucky – I might clock up a paltry 5,000 steps, while receiving updates on my UP app that say: ‘Anna has completed 18,000 steps today.’

I should be mourning the fact that I can no longer exercise and that my ankles will soon turn into giant squidgy sausages.

But knowing that Anna is achieving the top 5 per cent of steppers in the country, while I’m languishing in the bottom percentile, along with the injured and the infirm… now that’s my real Achilles’ heel.

My Parents… and the World Wide Web

by

Some time ago, my parents heard about something called the World Wide Web and decided that they might want to become involved in it. They contacted ‘a nice man from the church parish magazine’, who came round to the house and got them up and running with the internet, choosing the trusty Post Office as their internet provider.

I didn’t even know that the Post Office did internet connections. But it does, apparently. And my mother dutifully cycles there each month to pay the bill in person.

To say my parents haven’t quite got to grips with the digital age would be an understatement of gargantuan proportions. Only the other week, my mother asked me, ‘What is the difference between eBay and email?’.

My mother once tried to move the cursor using the laptop’s touch pad and five minutes later, she had only just made it half way across the screen. She hasn’t been near the computer since.

My father is a little more advanced. He has an email account that he checks roughly every six months. I think he once looked at our house on Google Earth. And there’s been rumours of him attempting a Google search on Bob Dylan.

The other week, I visited them for the night and foolishly mooted the prospect of using the internet. My mother shook her head nervously and my father looked baffled. After a bit of a conflab, my father appeared with his dusty laptop, switched it on and told me that it might take ‘a little while’ to load up.

45 minutes later, having watched Coronation Street and drunk two cups of coffee, my father returned and peered curiously at the laptop. It was STILL loading up. He appeared to think this was perfectly normal.

photo-69

‘What on earth is it doing?’ I wailed.

‘It’s okay,’ said my father. ‘We’ve got the hourglass. Something must be doing… something.’

‘This isn’t normal Dad,’ I said, clicking at the start-up menu furiously. ‘There is something SERIOUSLY WRONG with it!’

My father stared at the desktop.

‘What is a P…D…F?’ he said.

I couldn’t for the life of me think how to explain what a PDF was.

‘I don’t have the energy for this, Dad,’ I said. ‘I am LOSING THE WILL TO LIVE.’

‘Well, what does P.D.F stand for?’

‘It’s complicated,’ I replied.

We both sat there for another 10 minutes. My father occasionally peered suspiciously at the screen.

All of sudden, a plethora of blank Internet Explorer screens sprang up, with the message ‘Not Responding’.

‘Aha!’ cried my father, triumphantly. ‘It’s working!’

‘But why are there 10 blank screens?’ I said.

‘It’s because you’ve been impatient,’ said my father. ‘I told you not to jab at the keys!’

‘Impatient?! It’s been an HOUR!’

There was still no sign of getting onto the internet. Alarm bells should have rung when they first mentioned the Post Office.

‘Right, that’s it!’ I said, leaping up. ‘I’m sorting this out once and for all – I’m phoning Sky in the morning.’

The parents looked utterly terrified.

‘Please don’t,’ my mother begged. ‘They’ll make us set us set up one of those direct debit things and we only want to pay in cash.’

(The parents don’t believe in banks, cash cards or direct debits, preferring to store their life savings in the local building society – or, for all I know, under their mattress. See: Cash Is King)

The next morning, I drove back to Leeds and dropped the ailing laptop off at the local computer repair shop. An hour later, they phoned to confirm the worst.

I rang my father.

‘It’s bad news,’ I said. ‘The laptop has a serious hard drive failure.’

‘A… hard… drive??’ said my father, in a bewildered tone.

‘What on earth is one of those?’

Big Foot

by

Someone recently said to me, ‘Ooh, aren’t you lucky taking a size 8 shoe. You’ll be able to get first pick in the sales.’

That’s basically code for, ‘Your feet are so freakishly big that no one else could possibly have feet that big too. You have, effectively, OUTGROWN the competition.’

When I tell people that my feet are a UK size 8, they often don’t believe me. But honestly, they really are. They’re not a size 7 that occasionally require a size 8 shoe. No, they’re a fully-paid up member of The Size 8 Club (schleb members: Kate Winslet, Paris Hilton and Uma Thurman) to the point of – dare I say it – borderline size 9. Small children are terrified of them and, very occasionally, tourists attempt to board them, mistaking them for two passing cruise liners.

photo-88

Sales or no sales, there’s nothing lucky about having super-sized clodhoppers because about 90 per cent of shoes in a size 8 look utterly preposterous on my feet. I might spot a dainty pair of sandals on display but when the shop assistant (‘Sorry, did you say SIZE 8?!’) brings the same pair out in double the length, they look like two canal barges strapped to the bottom of my legs.

Only the other day, a shop assistant shook her head sympathetically and said: ‘Hmm… they ARE lovely shoes but they just don’t look right in a size that big.’

I didn’t always have this problem. But when I was 10 years old, I blew out the candles on my birthday cake, closed my eyes and made a wish. It wasn’t a pony I wished for, or My Little Pony’s Dream Castle. No, I wished for big feet.

At the time, I was having a competition with a classmate over whose feet were growing the fastest. I was hoping that when my mother next took me to get my feet measured on the machine at Clarks or K Shoes (remember them?), I could skip back to class and proudly announce: ‘My feet have gone up a whole two sizes – beat that, TINY TOES!’

At high school, my skinny legs resembled two golf clubs as the feet continued to grow. Fortunately, they stopped at size 8, sparing me from becoming a true oddity, who could only buy shoes via mail order from BigShoe4U.

But I’ve long since given up on procuring a pair of designer heels – mainly because most stop at size 7. Even many size 8 shoes (Topshop for example) are too tight. And ballet pumps just look like giant, flappy clown shoes.

Every autumn, I picture myself stylishly striding through crisp leaves in a sleek pair of Italian leather knee-highs. It’s a dream that usually ends with me grappling with a pair of boots that are so wide on my legs, they look more like wellies, before fleeing the shop despondently and rueing the day that I was ever cursed with these monstrous stompers.

For reasons which I’m still trying to fathom, boot designers ensure that the calf width of the boot – ludicrously – increases with the size of the foot. So basically, if you’re cursed with huge meaty sausages for legs, are well as big barges for feet, you’re fine. But if you’ve got sparrow’s legs like me, forget it.

Sometimes, I look down at my feet and marvel at the beastliness of them. Occasionally, I hold them up against the husband’s face, and think, ‘My foot is BIGGER than your head!’

The final indignity is that the husband is also a size 8 foot. Technically, we could share shoes. And that’s just plain weird.

Great Uncle Keith… and the Scotland Road Trip

by

I’m not sure quite how it happened but I found myself on a 600-mile road trip to the far recesses of Scotland with a toothless 85-year-old in my passenger seat.

We hadn’t seen my Great Uncle Keith for 25 years so it was a bit of shock when the phone rang at my parents’ house and a feeble voice rattled down the line, saying, ‘Hello, It’s Keithhhh.’

Great Uncle Keith, my father’s uncle, had slipped off the radar some time in the early 90s. He met a ‘lady friend’ called Valerie, who had seemingly wanted him all to himself and as a result, he had severed ties with the family.

A quarter of a century on, and with grasping Valerie having passed away, Great Uncle Keith had decided to re-connect with my father, his long-forgotten nephew – from all of 25 miles away in Manchester.

My father is an only child but his father George (now dead) had two other brothers – the aforementioned Keith, and Jack, who married Jill (!) and moved away to Scotland to lead a hardy life of hiking and extreme outdoor pursuits.

We hadn’t seen Jack and Jill for years either but would occasionally receive a postcard from them, usually from far-flung places like the Himalayas, accompanied by messages such as, ‘Did a steady 30-mile hike yesterday; tomorrow tackling Everest…’ or, ‘On the Inca Trail. 40 degrees. Terrain easy.’

Given that Keith hadn’t seen his brother Jack for many years either, I rather generously offered to drive him up there for a Scotland for a family reunion. My parents, never ones to miss out on an adventure, were to accompany us on the trip also, in order the provide some light relief or drive me to despair, depending on how you looked at it.

The first shock was the kind of surprise that you can only get when you haven’t seen someone for 25 years. Far from being the sprightly piano-playing uncle that my father fondly remembered, Keith was now a dithery old man, with only a few silver wisps of hair and, more worryingly, a distinct lack of teeth. He was to stay at my parents for the night before we embarked on the Great Road Trip to Garelochhead.

Somehow, at 2am in the morning, he managed to bring a whole glass shelf crashing down in the bathroom, causing my father to nearly have a heart attack and my mother to get terribly flustered indeed and make statements such as, ‘What on earth was he doing, CLATTERING around in the dead of night?!”

Morning came and the great road trip had begun. I was behind the wheel, with toothless Great Uncle Keith safely ensconced in the passenger seat. My mother was giving a running commentary of the scenery, while my father sat studying one of his Ordnance Survey maps. Four hours later, with a short lunch break (in which gummy Keith attempted to eat a sandwich like a gurning Les Dawson), we arrived at Jack and Jill’s little house on the edge of Loch Lomond.

I vaguely recall Jill from my childhood. She was rail thin, terribly fit and as sharp as glass. A retired headmistress through and through, she didn’t suffer fools gladly.

Jack was much more affable, very quiet and extremely fit also. Now 89, he was – unbelievably – still running up the fells and back before breakfast.

As the car pulled up, Jill waved a spindly arm. And the first thing she said as she greeted her long-lost brother-in-law was, ‘My goodness Keith, where on earth are your TEETH?’

It was a question that all of us were itching to know the answer to. We never did really get to the bottom of it.

She cast a shrewd eye over all of us and turned her attention to my father, who was visibly attempting to hold his stomach in.

‘And Michael,’ she went on. ‘Haven’t you put on weight?!’

Somewhat ironically, given her obsession with how porky we’d all become, she emerged from the kitchen with a mountain of cheese scones and insisted that we all tuck in immediately.

Jack, who had been out doing a spot of windsurfing on the loch and also appeared to have grown a handle bar moustache, arrived shortly after, and they both proceeded to regale us with tales of Pensioners Do Extreme Pursuits.

photo-86

Two hours later and having been force-fed several more cheese scones, the parents and I began to make noises about leaving for Glasgow – thankful that we’d had the foresight to book into our own hotel – and telling Great Uncle Keith that we would return to collect him in 48 hours. He looked petrified.

Driving back two days later, Keith was already waiting on the path with his battered suitcase. He had never looked so pleased to see us. As we bundled him into the car, Jill peered in and said, ‘Now Keith, remember what I said. Straight to the dentist as soon as you get back. And then you must consult a dietician immediately.’

Privately, I thought the chances of Keith, who only ever ventured as far as the corner shop, consulting a dietician were extremely slim (excuse the pun) but I didn’t dare voice this under Jill’s steely gaze.

‘No Teeth’ Keith just smiled compliantly, showing his gums.

On the journey back, Keith told us that Jack and Jill had marched him several miles up a hill – not to fetch a pail of water – but to explore the former residence of Glasgow-born designer Charles Macintosh (famed for those silly chairs with an elongated back). Reaching the summit, they found that the house had yet to open for the day.

‘Never mind,’ they said. ‘We’ll just walk several miles into town for lunch and come back in a couple of hours.’

On the verge of collapse, puffing Keith had to plead not to be taken back up the hill, at which point Jill expressed her horror at how unfit he had become.

Overall, he’d enjoyed his mini-break, Keith concluded. But he was glad to be getting home.

‘Perhaps you’re getting a bit long in the tooth for these trips away,’ my father quipped.

The Battle of the Sun-Beds

by

The Germans are often the butt of the joke when it comes to reserving sun-loungers with their towels.

And whilst I hate to fan the flames of this sweeping stereotype, it seems no coincidence that our hotel happens to be full of Germans, who are more than living up to the sun-bed hogging cliche.

Having struggled to find a sunbed on the first day of our holiday, we soon realised that we had to be more on our toes. Operation ‘Bag A Bed’ was put into action the following morning. Setting the alarm for 8am, we headed straight for the pool area, foolishly thinking we’d have free pick of the loungers pre-breakfast.

But – unbelievably – at 8.15am, every good spot was already taken. Rows of towels and magazines were strategically-placed on beds, while the occupants were nowhere to be seen.

photo-79photo-85

‘They probably came down here at the crack of dawn, threw down their towel, and then headed back in bed,’ I thought grimly.

The husband and I settled on our substandard sun-beds. Two hours later, and the mysterious hordes of sun-lounger hoggers still hadn’t appeared.

photo-84

Even the usually laissez-faire husband agreed it was infuriating.

‘There’s a sign next to the pool stating that you aren’t allowed to reserve a sunbed for more than 60 minutes,’ I said. ‘They’ve been several hours!’

But would you put your faith in this gormless poolside attendant to enforce such a rule?

photo-81

I didn’t think so.

The next morning, my alarm went off at 6.30am.

‘This is no holiday,’ mumbled the husband.

I tiptoed out of the room and scampered down the corridor in a cloak of darkness, thinking, ‘No sane person would get up this early… this’ll fox ’em!’

I leapt in the lift, armed with the all-important props – an old magazine and my sun hat – ready to commandeer the best sun-lounger humanly possible.

I trotted down the corridor, turned the corner, and was greeted by…

photo-82

… a very sodden looking pool area. It was absolutely pouring down.

I’d been foxed by the weather.

I trudged dismally back to bed, where in my mind I played out a Robin Hood-style scenario of sweeping up all of the magazines and towels around the pool and piling them up in the corner – a true crusader of the Save Our Sunbeds campaign.

When the sun-bed hoggers eventually arrived to reclaim their spot, I’d be innocently led nearby, pretending to be engrossed in my Kindle.

If approached, I’d probably say (in a terribly British accent): ‘Oh golly gosh, I have no idea who has moved your things…

‘Although now I come to I think of it, there IS a notice saying that you shouldn’t leave your sun-loungers unattended for more than 60 minutes. So I suspect it was probably the pool staff enforcing this very sensible rule. Auf wiedersehen!’

That didn’t happen, of course.

Instead I vowed to rise even earlier the following morning – or possibly sneak down to the pool at midnight, with a couple of towels I’d squirrelled away the day before.

The sun-bed war was on. And I wasn’t going to throw the towel in that easily.

The Ghost of Holidays Past

by

The annual Great Summer Holiday Hunt began in earnest about two months ago. First, there was the decision of where to go (France/ Italy/ Greece/ Bognor Regis…).

Next, was choosing a hotel (not too big, not too small, sizeable pool area, walking distance of a restaurants, preferably nestling alongside a picturesque harbour with postcard-perfect houses in pastel colours artfully positioned on the hillside – I don’t ask for much) and thirdly: Can it live up to our favourite hotel?

The problem with finding a hotel that you love is that you start comparing all other hotels to it – and sometimes they just don’t live up to the benchmark.

Last year, we went to Lindos Blu in Rhodes. In my mind it was the perfect hotel, pitching itself somewhere between boutique and medium-sized, offering a relaxing adults-only pool area gazing onto the Aegean sea, with plenty of scope for people-watching; attentive staff with just the right level of fuss; and a large, modern room with all the extras you’d hope for – such as a hot tub and a sunken bath. Lindos Blu was going to be a hard act to follow.

photo-76photo-78

And when it came to booking this year’s hotel, I couldn’t find anywhere that looked quite as good as Lindos Blu. After many hours trawling Tripadvisor (no matter how many excellent reviews there are, I always seem to home in on the negatives: ‘there was a pungent odour emanating from the bathroom… the food was barely edible’), I delivered the news to the husband that we might be heading back to our old friend Lindos Blu.

‘So you’re telling me that out of all the hotels in Europe, you can’t find a single suitable hotel?’ said the husband, with an air of weariness.

‘That’s about the size of it,’ I said. ‘It’s going to have to be Lindos Blu Part 2. We’ll be one of those strange couples who go to the same hotel and ask for the same room every year.

‘Unless…’ I added. ‘We play the wild card.’

‘Let’s play the wild card,’ said the husband. He thinks people who visit the same place year after year are a bit strange.

The wild card was a little-known hotel called Monte Mulini, perched atop a quaint harbour town called Rovinj in northern Croatia. It looked lovely.

So here we are, gazing out at the Istrian sea, lying on one of our hard-won sun-loungers, cheek to jowl with an uber-boobed Russian nuzzling her catalogue boy lover.

photo-74

It turns out that Rovinj isn’t so ‘little-known’ after all. In fact, half of Europe appears to have descended on the place. When we landed at the hotel yesterday afternoon, it was a beautiful sight… with just one problem: there wasn’t a single sun-lounger free – just scores of bare-breasted women and splashing children as far as the eye could see (okay, so the photo paints a serene scene but on ground level, it was a different story).

photo-73

‘This would never happen at Lindos Blu,’ I thought.

This morning, we rose and headed down for breakfast, passing the pool en route. Already, the hordes had descended, reserving nearly every sun lounger with a carefully-placed magazine or sunhat.

‘This is ridiculous,’ I thought. On principal, I don’t believe in reserving sun loungers pre-breakfast. I blame the Germans. They started this.

‘If you can beat ’em, join ’em,’ said the husband, throwing down his towel on one of the last remaining loungers and placing his Kindle on it territorially.

We headed up for breakfast; there wasn’t a single table free.

‘We would never had to queue at Lindos Blu,’ I grumbled.

He husband rolled his eyes.

‘And what’s more… I MISS NIGEL!’ I added, dramatically.

Nigel was a fellow holiday maker at Lindos Blu last year: a big-bellied booming man with an ego the size of France. He was the very dictionary definition of a ‘bon viveur’, greeting the staff by their first names and regaling his captive audience with tales of far-flung travel destinations.

photo-75

Occasionally, he would dive noisily into the pool and embark on a couple of lengths of butterfly – limbs akimbo – emerging to bellow down the phone at his harassed PA, before continuing his convivial chat with other poolside posers.

Basically, he provided hours of entertainment. We pretended that he was the most irritating guest imaginable but when he departed mid-way through the week, he left a big hole in our holiday.

‘We all miss Nigel,’ said the husband wistfully, as he gazed down the snaking line of people awaiting a table for breakfast.

And then he uttered the words that neither of us had dared to voice.

‘Get me back to Lindos Blu’.

The Crack Cocaine of Fast Food

by

The husband and I have a guilty little eating obsession that we’ve been keeping quiet about for some time. Like most addictions, it crept up on us slowly – a brief visit here and there if we happened to be passing.

But the lure of Nando’s neon rooster soon became too much. Before we knew it, we were bombing down there every Sunday to ravenously stuff our jowls with spicy chicken, licking our greasy fingers feverishly, as peri peri sauce dribbled down our chins.

photo-71

In the unlikely event that you’ve never entered its dark doors, Nando’s is basically a fast food restaurant that specialises in Portuguese-style chicken, accompanied by bottles of peri peri sauce, which range from mild to extremely hot. One hit and you’re hooked.

Some people go to Nando’s for a date night; some for a fun night with friends. But we visit Nando’s purely to get our fix. There is no element of enjoyment involved; like true addicts, we’re only interested in getting in there, feeding the addiction and getting out as quickly as is humanly possible.

Having to wait for a table is our worst nightmare. But we’ve developed a method that works quite well: the husband joins the queue to order, while I await a table allocation. Once seated, I text the table number to the husband, usually with the parting message, ‘Do what you need to do’.

There’s no need to go through the motion of pretending to look at the menu. We both know exactly what we want. And the beauty of Nando’s is that there’s no waiter interaction involved; better still, because you’ve paid upfront you can get the hell out of there as soon as the gorge is over.

Sometimes we don’t even speak to each other as we hungrily tuck in, swamping our chicken in hot peri peri sauce and shovelling spicy rice down the hatch at a revolting speed. At the end of the feast, we both sit in subdued silence, clutching our stomachs and fighting a rising sense of self-loathing, swearing that this really will be the last time we visit this rotten establishment.

But, of course, the next week we’re back.

The lengths that we will go to sate our peri peri craving are quite extreme. We’ve been know to travel 20 miles out of our way just to sink our gnashers into a medium-spiced half chicken. We were once forced to get a Nando’s takeout and eat it in our car, in a darkened alleyway. With our bare hands.

At my lowest ebb, I once sat on my own in a Nando’s in London gluttonously feasting on a double chicken wrap. At midnight. After downloading an app called Find My Nearest Nando’s. It was sick.

The addiction took a brief hiatus after a bad incident with a bottle of peri peri sauce. Disembarking at Leeds train station after a weekend away, we dragged our suitcases through the city centre with only one destination in mind. We had arrived just before closing, where one of the waiters was busy unscrewing the tops of the sauces to clean them.

Unfortunately for the husband, I happened to pick up one of the loose-topped bottles, which slipped in my greasy hands and did a rather dramatic somersault through the air, simulataneously showering the husband head to toe in peri peri sauce.

The poor husband had to travel home covered in sticky sauce. His suitcase stunk of it for weeks after. We had about a month off after that – swearing that this Really Was The End and that we were through with that place Once And For All.

That was, until a little voice started whispering ‘peri peri chicken, peri peri chicken’ and the cycle of gluttony started all over again. Going cold turkey on the Nando’s rooster was never going to last.

The husband might say, ‘What do you fancy for dinner tonight? I was thinking a little bit of chicken, a little bit of rice…’

‘Hmm… a little bit of chicken and rice – with perhaps a… spicy sauce?’ I’d reply innocently.

‘What could be the harm in that?’