Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Interlude II: Running, Drains & The Great Discovery
Entry Date: Sunday 9th August 2009
Jet lag is a strange phenomenon. You’d have thought that having gained five extra hours yesterday and then stayed up to the equivalent to four o’clock in the morning would’ve meant we’d all sleep like the proverbial, and indeed rather clichéd log. But my brain is having none of it. Which is why I find myself slipping on my shorts, lacing up the Asics, and tiptoeing out of the house at the ungodly hour of six o’clock to go for a run.
To describe the morning as beautiful would be as big an injustice as calling Usain Bolt a bit quick. It’s better than that. The sun is blazing, it’s already a balmy 80° F and the garden sprinklers are spreading rainbows of light all up the road. I like it. I don my shades, set my watch and head off towards the main road to have a look where we are.
When I reach the main road I turn and run towards the development next door to us. It looks like it will only be about a half a mile up the road and there’s a lovely new bit of pavement running toward it. Unfortunately, long and straight can sometimes prove deceptive, and it’s not long before the footpath suddenly ends and all that is in front of me is an overgrown grass track to separate me from the storm drain that runs down the whole length of the road. I’m tempted to just keep running along the grass but then something prickles in my memory and I think better of it and turn home.
You see, in England, a drain is something just about big enough to lose you car keys in, if you should happen to be so clumsy. Here, a drain is big enough to take the car, all its passengers and whatever you happen to be towing at the time. They’re big, and have to be the way the rain falls out of the sky a billion gallons at a time here. No, it’s not the water or how big they are that make me not want to risk slipping on the grass and arse over tit into huge ditch that worries me. It’s what you find lurking at the bottom when you get there.
Indulge me if you will. You’re driving along somewhere in England and have got to that moment where the term “breaking your neck for a piss” doesn’t do it justice anymore. So you stop by the side of the road, jump over the nearest fence and relieve yourself of your urinary burden. The worst thing that can happen to you is a bull will give you the evil eye, or you land in a pile of horseshit. Try that in Florida and you could well find yourself whilst mid flow confronted by a toothy grin and never able to tell the joke about counting to eleven again……
And so it proves that discretion is the better part of valour, because as I run back along the path towards our little homestead something in the drain catches my eye. Sitting there, bold as you like and grinning needle sharp teeth in the sunshine, is a cold blooded, black eyed, Florida Alligator.
The 29 Hour Long Day: Part 3 (Extra Time) Florida Home
Entry Date: Saturday 8th August 2009
Come on, admit it. We’ve all done it. It’s a cold, drab, depressing mid-winter day and the Seasonal Affective Disorder (or SAD for short; never has a condition been so well named) is kicking in and you can only see one way out. On your way home from work you make a quick diversion into the Travel Agents and grab yourself a handful of glossy holiday brochures to while away the hours until the sun shines properly again.
Flicking through the pages whilst nursing a cup of Lemsip, you’re seduced by photos of swaying palms, aquamarine seas, and smouldering sunsets framed by beautiful people touching cocktail glasses and looking like they’re about to go off and have sex as soon as the photographer has packed his tripod away.
And then you see it. The five-star, luxury hotel room with all trimmings. Sea views, rooms with beds that would comfortably sleep six, Olympic swimming pool sized baths, Olympic swimming pool sized pool even. It looks the absolute business. Before you know it, the credit card is out and you’ve booked 2 weeks B&B and a mid sized, four door, family hatch to haul you and the sprogs around in once you get there. The excitement builds from here.
Unfortunately when you’re kicked off the Tour Operators’ coach several months later it’s all a bit of a let down. The hotel isn’t quite as flash as it looked in the brochure. The pool maybe not quite so big. The beds, the room perhaps and even the view are not quite as impressive as the glossy pages had you imagine. It’s fair to say you might be a tad disappointed.
And so as we pull up outside the house that is to be our home for the next two weeks we are all just a little apprehensive.
And we were right to be. The house isn’t vaguely similar to the one in the brochure. It’s EXACTLY the one in the brochure. Down, as it happens, even to the number. It’s fantastic, and we sit parked on the drive for a full five minutes just staring at the loveliness. The spell is soon broken and we leg it indoors to see if the inside is as good as the out. It is, It’s marvellous. Four beds, three baths, two big sitting areas, dining room, breakfast area, kitchen. Even some place where women go to do stuff to clothes too! Fuck me, it’s better than home. But it’s not until we throw back the living room curtains that the piece de résistance is revealed. A huge patio area containing the bluest swimming pool and bubbliest Jacuzzi any of us have ever seen. Job done!As we all dump our cases, don our trunks, and slip into the inviting blue waters beers in hand, I can’t help but think - It may have been twenty nine hours long, but at least it seems the day has ended in paradise.
Friday, September 25, 2009
The 29 Hour Long Day: Part2 (The Florida Hours)
Entry Date: Saturday 8th August 2009
It would be fair to say that our flight across the pond, as our American friends like to call it, was uneventful. And let’s be honest here, that really is the most you want from trip in a three hundred ton aluminium tube full of half cut, sweaty people off on their holidays. There was no CAT, there were no fights, and there was no sudden loss of cabin pressure, the plane plunging out of control as people start tearing at their eyes and screaming “WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE……..!!!!” None of that.
In fact due to something to do with wind and physics, we actually landed 50 minutes ahead of schedule which, whilst being pretty good from the point of view that you can get off the plane that bit earlier, is more than balanced out by the fact that the American Security Agency Inc. can now quite reasonably delay you even longer than normal. It just take an age to get through security – passport checked, photo taken, thumbprints, fingerprints, retinal scan, DNA check, rubber gloves and light on the lubricant – it just a soul destroyingly long time bearing in mind not only how long you’ve taken to get there, but you still have that most fabulous of all experiences ahead of you, waiting for your luggage. But here we get one over on the Man, coz they’ve delayed us so long the only bags waiting to be collected are ours. UP YOURS!
Of course, we still have to get our hire car, which is the automotive equivalent of pulling teeth. A man smiles broadly at you and assures you everything is going to be alright, and then makes you scream in agony. We think we’re ahead of the game on this one having booked the “Ultra Mega Complete Dollar Car Hire Package©” which includes absolutely everything and are therefore rather pleased with ourselves until the smiling man gets involved. Then we find out that breakdown cover, additional drivers, tolls, seats, water and air in the tyres are all “additional items” we need to pay for before he’ll give us the keys. We weep as we hand over several hundred dollars we weren’t expecting to and we haven’t even left the airport yet.
At least when the car turns up it is suitably impressive. The size of an Abramovich Yacht and bearing the legend Dodge Grand Caravan, it’s the sort of vehicle that would have the denizens of Essex queuing round the block to buy. It easily swallows all our luggage and six persons and still has enough grunt to move itself out of the airport (with one of us assisting behind the wheel, natch) although it’s accompanied by the most peculiar sucking sound. We soon discover this is linked to both the accelerator pedal and fuel gauge and is the petrol disappearing at a tear inducing rate as the 3.3 litre V6 drags us along. Fortunately, once shorn of the luggage and with gas only $2.50 a U.S. sized gallon (the only thing smaller there than here) it’s not as bad as it at first looked.
As we set off for our Florida Home, down the wide, straight, speed camera free roads - roads built for cars, and still intended for their original use, so no speed bumps, traffic calming or any of that bollocks – the sense of excitement grows. We pass signs for Universal Studios, Disney Magic Kingdom, Seaworld - and a rather bizarre advert for something called “Tower of Terror” which shows screaming people plunging to almost certain death in an out of control lift – and all the aggro at the airport is forgotten. The sun is shining, it fucking hot and the most fun you can have with you clothes on is scattered in the theme parks all around us, just waiting for us to come and play. We can’t wait………………..
Interlude
It’s seems to make sense to introduce my little holiday party to you as you’re going to hear so much about them over the next few posts, and it might be nice if you knew who the hell I was talking about. So here goes….
Kieran Morris: Co-Driver and Full Time Photographer. Have known him since secondary school, we’ve been and seen it, done it all together and some. His wife wants to kill us every time we say “do you remember that time when……” If you ever needed to know where he was on holiday, you’d just turn and look fifty yards back……where he’d be lying down taking a picture.
Paula Morris: Kieran’s wife. Mum and carrier of the bottomless bag of cures, pills and potions. Already a fabulous mahogany colour before we even got on the plane, no one wanted to have to stand next to her in a picture.
Caitlin Morris: My beautiful 13 year goddaughter. She’s a 13 year old girl; work the rest out for yourself…..
Conor Morris. Small boy aged 9. Has hair like Leo Sayer and a cheeky grin that gets him out of almost all of trouble. Seems interested mainly in DS, winding his sister up and insects. I’m pretty certain if he could grow gills we’d never see him on land again. Earned the nickname Shark Bait due to his pre-holiday concern that’d he’d be eaten by a Great White Shark if he went swimming in the sea, a concern we shamefully did little to allay. You may be hearing quite a bit about him over the weeks…….
Lisa Robertson. My missus, Planer, Tour Rep and fixer. Roundly mocked by us all when she released V1.0 of our Holiday Itinerary six months ahead of departure, but without whom we wouldn’t have even got as far as the airport. And grudgingly, she was right about the now legendary itinerary……
Me. Co-Driver. I just went along for a laugh…..
Kieran Morris: Co-Driver and Full Time Photographer. Have known him since secondary school, we’ve been and seen it, done it all together and some. His wife wants to kill us every time we say “do you remember that time when……” If you ever needed to know where he was on holiday, you’d just turn and look fifty yards back……where he’d be lying down taking a picture.
Paula Morris: Kieran’s wife. Mum and carrier of the bottomless bag of cures, pills and potions. Already a fabulous mahogany colour before we even got on the plane, no one wanted to have to stand next to her in a picture.
Caitlin Morris: My beautiful 13 year goddaughter. She’s a 13 year old girl; work the rest out for yourself…..
Conor Morris. Small boy aged 9. Has hair like Leo Sayer and a cheeky grin that gets him out of almost all of trouble. Seems interested mainly in DS, winding his sister up and insects. I’m pretty certain if he could grow gills we’d never see him on land again. Earned the nickname Shark Bait due to his pre-holiday concern that’d he’d be eaten by a Great White Shark if he went swimming in the sea, a concern we shamefully did little to allay. You may be hearing quite a bit about him over the weeks…….
Lisa Robertson. My missus, Planer, Tour Rep and fixer. Roundly mocked by us all when she released V1.0 of our Holiday Itinerary six months ahead of departure, but without whom we wouldn’t have even got as far as the airport. And grudgingly, she was right about the now legendary itinerary……
Me. Co-Driver. I just went along for a laugh…..
Friday, September 18, 2009
The 29 hour long day: Part 1 (English hours)
Entry date: Saturday 8th August 2009
There’s one big advantage that flying transatlantic has over, say, a short hop down to Greece. The last time we went to Kefalonia we’d played that little mind trick on ourselves of thinking that the earlier we booked our outward flight, the more time we’d have in the sun, rather than standing around waiting to go. So it was up at 3 for a cab at 4 to be at the airport by 5 for a 7 o’clock flight. You’ll be at the poolside, glass in hand, well in time for lunch. Sorted. Except it never really works like that, what with the couple of hours’ time difference, archaic baggage retrieval, creaking transfer coaches and the generally lackadaisical attitude of the pimply, hungover reps, and you’re lucky if you’re anywhere near your first Metaxa and coke within half a day of leaving home. Add in having been up at Dawn’s Crack (ahem) and all you’re fit for by the time you arrive is a lie down in a darkened room. Pants.
It’s much more civilised with long haul. The airline knows you’re going to suffer at their hands for 9 arse-numbing hours of screaming children, 3rd rate food and cattle class leg room, so they at least allow you to have a lie in and get to the airport at a reasonable time. And so we don’t need to pitch up airside until a very reasonable 8 o’clock, by which time our friends have already bagged a spot in the queue and we’re soon all sorted, with just the exceptionally dull wait for boarding to pass with all those nasty people you wouldn’t normally go near with a barge pole. Yes, that does mean you in the turquoise velour tracksuit.
Except, due once again to my wife’s excellent forward planning, we don’t have to mingle with the great unwashed. Not for us the screaming children (and parents) in Arsenal shirts, Primark “three for a fiver” shorts and cheap sunglasses, oh no. We’re off to the far more salubrious surroundings of the Virgin Executive Lounge no less. All because the day we tried to book the holiday Virgin tried to bankrupt us by charging us twice for the holiday and with wife champing at the bit over this, they gave us all free run of their flagship business lounge as recompense.
And it’s well worth it. Free breakfast, kids’ games room, clean toilets, sophisticated people - it’s all lovely. Until of course they let in the group of twenty five identically clad northerners all sporting T-Shirts proclaiming “Higginbottom Family Tour Disney 2009”, with a pissed Mickey on the front, and a first name and team number on the back. They of course do that thing where they have to disrupt the whole place by trying to sit all around one table and anoying everyone else in the place by cheerily trying to ponce chairs off them. When they ask me if they can take one of ours I politely tell them to fuck off. Wankers.
But nothing can dampen the holiday spirit and by the time I’ve finished my fourth bacon roll and 7th cup of coffee our flight is being called and it’s time for the six of us to start the holiday proper, by getting pissed on an aeroplane…..
There’s one big advantage that flying transatlantic has over, say, a short hop down to Greece. The last time we went to Kefalonia we’d played that little mind trick on ourselves of thinking that the earlier we booked our outward flight, the more time we’d have in the sun, rather than standing around waiting to go. So it was up at 3 for a cab at 4 to be at the airport by 5 for a 7 o’clock flight. You’ll be at the poolside, glass in hand, well in time for lunch. Sorted. Except it never really works like that, what with the couple of hours’ time difference, archaic baggage retrieval, creaking transfer coaches and the generally lackadaisical attitude of the pimply, hungover reps, and you’re lucky if you’re anywhere near your first Metaxa and coke within half a day of leaving home. Add in having been up at Dawn’s Crack (ahem) and all you’re fit for by the time you arrive is a lie down in a darkened room. Pants.
It’s much more civilised with long haul. The airline knows you’re going to suffer at their hands for 9 arse-numbing hours of screaming children, 3rd rate food and cattle class leg room, so they at least allow you to have a lie in and get to the airport at a reasonable time. And so we don’t need to pitch up airside until a very reasonable 8 o’clock, by which time our friends have already bagged a spot in the queue and we’re soon all sorted, with just the exceptionally dull wait for boarding to pass with all those nasty people you wouldn’t normally go near with a barge pole. Yes, that does mean you in the turquoise velour tracksuit.
Except, due once again to my wife’s excellent forward planning, we don’t have to mingle with the great unwashed. Not for us the screaming children (and parents) in Arsenal shirts, Primark “three for a fiver” shorts and cheap sunglasses, oh no. We’re off to the far more salubrious surroundings of the Virgin Executive Lounge no less. All because the day we tried to book the holiday Virgin tried to bankrupt us by charging us twice for the holiday and with wife champing at the bit over this, they gave us all free run of their flagship business lounge as recompense.
And it’s well worth it. Free breakfast, kids’ games room, clean toilets, sophisticated people - it’s all lovely. Until of course they let in the group of twenty five identically clad northerners all sporting T-Shirts proclaiming “Higginbottom Family Tour Disney 2009”, with a pissed Mickey on the front, and a first name and team number on the back. They of course do that thing where they have to disrupt the whole place by trying to sit all around one table and anoying everyone else in the place by cheerily trying to ponce chairs off them. When they ask me if they can take one of ours I politely tell them to fuck off. Wankers.
But nothing can dampen the holiday spirit and by the time I’ve finished my fourth bacon roll and 7th cup of coffee our flight is being called and it’s time for the six of us to start the holiday proper, by getting pissed on an aeroplane…..
Thursday, September 17, 2009
T-Minus 24
Entry date: Friday 7th August 2009…but I had an excuse. See, since the beginning of the year I’ve lost 21lbs and so most of my clothes don’t fit. Combine this with the fact that not having a paying job means I’ve not been able to buy anything new, and I’m rather limited to what I can take away with me and not look like Demis Roussos after a crash diet (without the beard of course…..)
I tell my wife this as she contemplates the empty suitcase which should be bagged, tagged and ready and waiting in the downstairs hallway. Luckily, she has a plan. See, a couple of years back I actually weighed 21lbs less than I do now, so had got into the habit of buying clothes in L, rather than the more common XL to be found in my wardrobe. All it takes is a few minutes rummaging in the deepest, darkest recesses of my closet - past the cricket gear that’s not seen the light of day for many a season and behind the slide projector redundant since the onset of the digital camera – and lo and behold we (ahem…) manage to rustle up 5 t-shirts that don’t look either too old from residing unloved at the back of the cupboard for so long, nor too tent-like once hanging from my now positively sylph-like frame. Add 3 pairs of pants (one for each week) a pair of socks and my sunnies and BINGO!, we’re all set. Well, that was easy, I don’t know what all the fuss was about…
Now all that’s left to do is kill the hours before the inevitable early bedtime required by law when you’re off the airport and as usual, I can’t settle. All I can think about is plane crashes, swine flu, have I packed too much, am I fat enough to get in to America and inevitably, as I at last manage to drift off to sleep…will there be toilets when we get there?
I tell my wife this as she contemplates the empty suitcase which should be bagged, tagged and ready and waiting in the downstairs hallway. Luckily, she has a plan. See, a couple of years back I actually weighed 21lbs less than I do now, so had got into the habit of buying clothes in L, rather than the more common XL to be found in my wardrobe. All it takes is a few minutes rummaging in the deepest, darkest recesses of my closet - past the cricket gear that’s not seen the light of day for many a season and behind the slide projector redundant since the onset of the digital camera – and lo and behold we (ahem…) manage to rustle up 5 t-shirts that don’t look either too old from residing unloved at the back of the cupboard for so long, nor too tent-like once hanging from my now positively sylph-like frame. Add 3 pairs of pants (one for each week) a pair of socks and my sunnies and BINGO!, we’re all set. Well, that was easy, I don’t know what all the fuss was about…
Now all that’s left to do is kill the hours before the inevitable early bedtime required by law when you’re off the airport and as usual, I can’t settle. All I can think about is plane crashes, swine flu, have I packed too much, am I fat enough to get in to America and inevitably, as I at last manage to drift off to sleep…will there be toilets when we get there?
T-Minus 48
Entry Date: Thursday 6th August 2009
Two years…..two WHOLE years. It’s a pretty long time to be given to organise something. I’m sure if you were told to take two years to organise a little soiree for you and some chums off to foreign climes you’d say “no problem, two whole years, piece of fucking piss…!” You would then, of course, forget about it for 23 months and then go into a massive panic trying to set something up at the last minute all the while wondering why you didn’t get going sooner. Which is how, in a round about way, I come to be staring into an empty suitcase with less than two days before the biggest, most expensive holiday of my life, and I’ve not got the faintest idea what I’m going to put in it….
But, I’m ahead of myself…..
It all started on a cold, windy and mildly depressing day on a beach in Ouddorp, Netherlands, as me and some of my friends, fresh from a night a of fantastic music from the ever brilliant Marillion, attempted to walk off our hangovers. As we strolled along in wind chilly enough to chap a polar bear’s chaps, we mused how lovely it would be in the summer, with the sun out and the sky blue on this beautiful, immense strand of the Dutch coast. There were in fact only three problems we could think of :-
1) The beach was so big you couldn’t even see the sea from where we were, it was at least a mile away.
2) The sea, when you got there, was of the North variety, very popular around those well known bathing areas of Newcastle and Scotland, and because of this is both fucking freezing and full of used tampons.
3) It’s in the most grey, depressing and downright boring place in the world – Holland.
The plan soon conceived then was not to holiday here, but to save a few quid, and take a couple of cheap weeks off on a beach in Greece, Spain, Italy – wherever – and very nice it would be too….
Unfortunately the excitement of agreeing to a good old fashioned few days in the sun, combined with beer, wine and the generally over-reaching nature of me and my mates once drunk, meant by the time the evening was out we’d all agreed that what we really wanted was three weeks in Florida with two weeks of theme parks, water rides and anatomically incorrect animals followed by a week by the sea…………
And now we’re right back, over two years later, with me staring into that empty suitcase. Fortunately for me, my wife has been rather brilliant and actually spent the last two years organising the trip, so there’s unlikely to be any last minute hiccups there. I was tasked with literally one job, which was this….have your case packed by Monday. And here we are on Thursday with it containing nothing more than my iPod and a copy of Guitarist magazine, both of which shouldn’t be in there as they’re supposed to be in my hand luggage. All in all, not a very impressive start…
