Holidays

Archive for the 'Holidays' Category

Grandad January 25th, 2010

It’s that time of year to start contemplating a spot of a holiday.

For the last two years, we toddled over the water to France. The plan is not to go again this year. There are a couple of reasons for this – we feel like a change, and there was that rather nasty letter we got from the Gendarmerie telling us that we’re not welcome any more. How the hell was I supposed to know that you need a special permit to hunt tourists in France?

We thought we would spend a couple of weeks on home soil for a change. It is quite a while since we had a holiday here, so we felt that a change is as good as a rest.

I don’t know why, but we both fancy a trip to the Bantry area. We used to holiday a lot there and have stayed in most parts of West Cork. We even spent part of our honeymoon in Crookhaven, in the first week of February. If you can tolerate West Cork in the first week in February, you can tolerate anything.

I have lovely memories from the past. There was the day we drove from Kenmare to Glengariff and stopped to watch the Betelgeuse burn. There was the holiday we spent in Castletown and watched the planes take part in the Air India disaster. Happy days.

So I am now on the lookout for somewhere to stay. Maybe one of my readers can help?

We are very flexible in our requirements. Our basic needs are very simple.

Must be not too far from Bantry.
Must accept dogs.
Must allow smoking.
Must be within walking distance of a pub that allows smoking.
Must be quiet.
Must be close to shops and amenities.
Must be reasonably priced.
Not interested in a pool, but broadband would be nice.

There. I told you we were flexible.

Let the offers roll in……..

Season’s Greetings

Grandad December 21st, 2009

Christmas? Pish! A newfangled institution.

New Year? Piffle! Nearly as fresh out of the box as Christmas.

Now if you want a good honest decent festival, pick one that predates those two pretenders by thousands of years.

Happy Solstice everyone.

Free offer from Irish Ferries

Grandad October 10th, 2009

Those fucking arseholes in Irish Ferries sent me an email on Thursday evening.

It was a lovely mail. It said that because I had sailed on the Ireland – France route during the summer, that I was entitled to a free return trip to the UK next year.

Have you made a return trip to France in Summer 2009? If so, you are entitled to a FREE return trip to Britain!

The trip is for a car and 2 adults return on our cruise ferry services from Dublin to Holyhead or Rosslare to Pembroke so you can get away from the doom and gloom without spending a penny of your hard earned cash! Cheer yourself up – book your FREE trip NOW.

This was great news as I always wanted to show Herself around my old stomping ground around Somerset. She deserves a holiday, as the coal hole is quite draughty.

I spent Thursday night happily browsing around the Interweb looking for suitable accommodation.

I found a lovely place in a wee village called Wedmore which is quite close to Cheddar. They like smokers there, and Sandy would be welcome too, and it was only 100 yards crawl from the pub.

Perfect.

I spent a happy couple of hours dreaming of wandering the Mendips. I could visit my old haunts in Cheddar, Wells and Bath. I might even let Herself do some shopping.

Before I did anything permanent though, I decided to check on a couple of things with those fucking arseholes in Irish Ferries.

I wrote them a nice email, thanking them for the nice offer, and could they confirm that there weren’t any restrictions, such as having to return within half an hour of arriving. I also wanted to find out exactly when I could go, as the offer is for ‘off peak’, and their web site wasn’t too clear on that matter.

I had checked their site thoroughly, as it gave the terms and conditions of the offer, but I couldn’t find a definition of ‘off peak’.

Anyway, the fucking arseholes wrote back yesterday.

They said I’m not entitled to the offer, because although I travelled with them during the offer period, I came back in September, and apparently some fucking arsehole in Irish Ferries has decided that September isn’t summer.

Fucking arseholes.

Parlez vous Garlic?

Grandad October 1st, 2009

There are two things that confuse me about the French.

One is that they don’t seem to laugh very much, which is very surprising as they don’t have Fianna Fail to contend with all the time.

The other is that they insist on speaking a foreign language.

I like French as a language. It isn’t as guttural as German [why do Germans always sound like they are about to sneeze?] and it is one hell of a lot better than Spanish or Italian. Those two just sound like popcorn going off, and irritate the hell out of me. One of the few things I miss about living in suburbia is making life hell for Spanish students.

The French language is quite soft and is very definitely sexy. I have gotten into trouble with quite a few Fine Things over the last couple of weeks when they asked me something simple in French, and I thought they said something else entirely. But that’s another story for another time [the first court hearing is in six weeks].

For some strange reason, quite a few French people copped onto the fact that I don’t speak fluent French [translation – my French is shite], and a few of them actually started speaking English to me. When I replied in French, they got even more confused. They would then say [in French] that they were sorry, but that they thought I was English, to which I would reply [in French] that I’m not English, so much as Irish. They would then reply that they don’t speak Irish to which my reply was always that I don’t speak much of it myself these days. It was usually around this time in the conversation that we gave up altogether, and spoke Japanese [of which I haven’t a single word].

Shopping was the worst as it is very difficult asking for things that I couldn’t point to.

Has anyone got any use for fifteen cartons of sanitary towels, a patio heater and a tame giraffe?

Roger is a pain in the arse

Grandad September 27th, 2009

I never thought I would say this, but Roger the SatNav is being a right pain in the hole.

I think it all started that last day we went to Domme.

When we were leaving, I decided his tortuous route through the town was a bit much, so I followed the signposts instead. Now I grant you I did follow the wrong signposts, but at least I got us out of the lace legally, which is more than Roger would have done.

He went into a bit of a hissy fit as soon as we left the town and insisted on bringing us on a crazy tour of the local hills. Next thing I knew he had brought us to a top secret military installation. Why he wanted to go there, I will never know.

I found it on Google Earth, but they have deliberately fuzzed it up.

SGS_Fuzzed

You can see the road Roger brought us on, at the top left. What the picture doesn’t show is that every ten feet there was a sign warning of the direst consequences if we even thought about stopping, let alone taking a photograph.

Here is a photograph.

SGS_Clear

I think that was Roger’s final downfall.

A few hundred yards further down the road I realised that Roger had locked up. I think the radiation must have fried his brain. Leastwise I had to give him a severe thump before he politely and contritely brought us home.

He has been acting up ever since. This morning we wanted to drive from Poitiers to Tours, but not on the motorway. You would think that would be a simple enough instruction, but Roger threw a fine strop. He refused to start altogether. I threw him across the car park and he decided to show us where we were. Or rather he showed us where he thought we were, but we weren’t there at all. I belted him off the car roof and he finally and reluctantly told us where we were, and he got it right, so we hit the road.

We had a fine journey, and stopped off in Chatellerault from a couple of lovely coffees in the sun.

It was when we were approaching Tours that things started to go wrong again.

According to Roger we were driving along a nice straight stretch of the road, even though we were driving through a small town at the time. Also a very irritating local radio station was blasting out of the speakers, even though I had told Roger to play silent music. I stopped the car and had to give him a belt of the wheel brace. He went and had a sex change and became a very irritating American woman, and then finally told us where our hotel was.

I just asked him where the local good eateries are. He suggested the hotel next door to us. I don’t trust him any more. It’s probably an abattoir.

God knows where we’ll end up tomorrow?