The Holiday: The Girl's Side of the Story

Once upon a time there was a girl who went on holiday with her boyfriend. But not just her boyfriend. 12 other people came along as well, mainly members of the boyfriend's family.

The troop ranged in age from 3 to 90 and their first battle was with the check-in desk. Never try and check in with 9 people at the same time - you will annoy yourself and everyone around you as they try to clamber over your bodies and bags. The Girl retreated to a safe distance until the danger had passed.

When they got to France they drove through the countryside, while the sun was setting and arrived at their final destination. The Girl, too tired to look about properly collapsed into bed and promptly fell asleep, awakening to the sun streaming in through the window and the realisation that this was her chateau (for a week anyway).

The Girl's days over the week followed a fairly similar pattern. Get up, eat, read by the pool, swim in the pool, perfect her bombing technique in the pool, read, eat, read, lie out in the shade, usually beneath a tree (and read), shower, eat, drink, read and sleep.

The Girl did haves some adventures along the way. She swam in the river (La Gironde if you like your geography) - there was a gentle current that drifted you downstream, she didn't need to make much effort, just lie back and float, staring up at the cloudless blue sky.

She also ventured further afield and took her first ever trip to a water park, Aqualand. Never had she seen such delights, water slides galore of every shape and size, and also such sights - Aqualand was where speedos came to die.

The Girl decided she would go on an innocent looking slide - "it's just got a few bumps on it" she thought to herself. Off she went, "Wheeeeeeee!!!!" and hit the water at the bottom with such force that she gave herself the biggest wedgie known to man. She learnt a new skill that day - how to quickly get out of very shallow water whilst retrieving your tankini bottoms from out of her behind. She went on it a couple of times but realised her dignity couldn't hold out much longer so she gracefully retired.

The Girl also made a cat friend. She likes to find a cat on each of her holidays. When she went to America she made friends with Pool Cat, a big fluffy beast who would come and join her by the pool at all times of the day. This holiday was no exception and she made friends with Lily. Lily was not just an ordinary cat, Lily was Mr Lily. The family thought they were getting a pretty girl but in fact had a very handsome boy. However the name stuck and Mr Lily doesn't seem to mind having a girl's name.

What The Girl had feared most was whether she could spend that much time with her boyfriend's family, or indeed that much time with her boyfriend.

Her fears were (mostly) unfounded. There were times when it seemed as if the world would never be quiet agani but The Girl learnt to just take herself away at those times. People would just have to deal with the absence of her presence. She also bowed out a mass shopping trip to the supermarket - the thought of 3 cars full of them traipsing up the aisles brought her out in a cold sweat. So she waved her boyfriend off - "I won't be long" he called out. She smiled a wry smile - "We'll see" She said to herself.

They returned 3 hours later...

However the one person she never got tired of being around was her boyfriend. And what's all that really matters doesn't it?

Well that and getting a tan.

I do want to post about the holiday....

...but this is what the ironing basket looks like right now

Blogging services will be resumed shortly...

The Holiday: Happy Bear's Side of the Story

We arrived back from France late on Sunday night but my feet haven't touched the floor yet so the blog has had to wait.

Until now...

The youngest member of our tribe was given Happy Bear by her nursery to take on holiday. The idea being that we took photos of him to be put in a diary, charting his holiday.

I haven't had a chance to get my thoughts together yet to write an entry about the holiday so I figured that until then Happy Bear's story would do...

Happy Bear arrived in Bordeaux airport in the early evening and hung about guarding the luggage while the big people sorted out the car hire...

Happy Bear had a pretty relaxing holiday.

He swam in the pool...

He sunbathed (being sure to put his suncream on)...

And when it was too hot he read in the shade...

...or looked at the view out of the upstairs sitting room window...

Happy Bear by name, Happy Bear by nature.

Au revoir!

Passports? Check

Bags all packed? Check

Lists all ticked off? Check

House nice and clean for when we come back? Check

(Boyfriend who doesn't understand why the house has to be clean when we're going to be away? Check)

Excitement growing? Check

SEE YOU IN A WEEK!

Ding! Ding! Next round

So the next big stage in the relationship is coming up....

THE HOLIDAY

We've conquered living together (well apart from a few issues around cleaning, watching tv, tidying up....yeah quite a few issues actually...) so now it's time for the holiday together.

To be honest it's easy peasy to live with someone because it's not like we see each other all the time, he's out of the house just after 6am and doesn't come back until nearly 7pm and then there's the computer to play games on, televisions to watch, pictures to cross stitch, blogs to write so even when we're both home we're not in each other's pockets. And there always seems to be something going on on a weekend (which is why there are still things that need doing in the flat) so we don't actually spend that much quality alone alone time together.

Well I'm about to get all the alone time I want with 7 whole days coming up in each other's company.

And not just each other's company...

All his family's company as well...13 of them to be precise.

Yep I'm being serious. All it takes is 3 siblings to have boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands and children, throw in a couple of half siblings and a couple of grandparents and you have the recipe for a possibly very chaotic holiday.

Whlist I'm looking forward to getting away, really looking forward to it in fact, I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a certain amount of trepidation that I'm feeling. I get on with everyone in his family really well but I don't know how well I can get on with them for a week. Non-stop. 24-7.

They're great they're just....very....fussy. I'm from a non-fussy family. Everyone does their own thing and gets on with it and there's no great pressure to do anything, everything will just work out. My boyfriend's family are pretty much the complete opposite - everything's a drama and there's a lot of "Well you can do this but you don't have to do it. You don't have to do it at all." (Meaning that if you don't do it you can be almost guaranteed a sulk) This is compounded by the fact that my boyfriend is pretty much a wuss when it comes to his mother. He can stand up in front of judge and jury and argue a case but he absolutely cannot say no to Mummy. It's infuriating. I can't be the one that says no - that'll make me the horrible witch who's stolen her son!

My hope is that in a crowd of 14 people, no-one's going to miss 2 of them if they sneak away for a little bit...

What I'm doing this evening...

I have been abandonned by the boyfriend who is staying over night a long way away for work.

Booooooooo.

So I have been mainly doing the following....

Nursing my cold, which is NOT SWINE FLU! If one more person makes that joke or looks at me as if I've got leprosy, I'm going to deliberately sneeze or cough on them. (Please note: I'm not being cavalier, I don't have a fever which is one of the main swine flu symptoms)


And yes I am too cheap to buy tissues - toilet roll will have to do.

I have begun getting my feet beach ready (4 days to go baby!). Which involves scrubbing all that minging dead skin off them, slathering them in moisturising cream - laughing at the scar on the bottom of my foot that is the result of an ill-advised decision to walk home barefoot in Manchester and a run in with a broken bottle - and then painting my nails. Hate not having painted toenails. The nails on my hands I can cope with but my bare toenails? Bleurgh.

I've got all my clothes out ready for packing. I am a terrible packer. I always pack approximately 10,000 items too many and am determined to be one of those people who rock up with a normal sized suitcase full of brilliant pieces of clothing that work in 14 different ways. Failing that I'm only going for 1 week so can't overpack too much....she says.

Note: I am not taking the ginger furry person in the top right of the picture - although I would love to

Other than that I've been watching telly with my two furballs, we all liked Send in the Dogs - a programme about police dogs. When I was a wee thing the first job I ever wanted to do was be a police dog handler. Strange I know. And I couldn't even tell you why. All I do know is that it was the start of a long-standing obsession with German Shepherd dogs. I just love them and really hope I get the opportunity to own one one day. The programme also featured English Springer Spaniels, a dog my boyfriend's parents own - she's a hilarious character, mainly because she's the biggest wuss going. The difference between her and these drug-sniffing dogs couldn't be bigger.

I don't think it'll be long before we're all in bed where I can hopefully get a decent night's sleep before waking up to this....

The Competition

Yes X-box I see you there.

I see your green malevolent eye glittering at me.

I know your game. I'm on to you.

Yes you do have the ability to completely distract my boyfriend whenever my back is turned. I walk out of the room and within minutes I hear the sound of gunfire and an indistinct 'foreign' voice (I think it's meant to be Russian but I'm never sure).

And yes you have the ability to reduce him to a bit of a drooling wreck, unable to communicate with me when I ask him questions because he's too busy clicking and tapping away on the controller.

And yeah ok when my nephews came round at the weekend you provided a much better distraction for them than I did, further highlighting that I am no longer the cool Auntie I once was when they were younger. And I can't even join in because I can't play those stupid games.

Yeah and the games are stupid. They are silly games that I don't even want to play. I don't want to hear my Call of Duty or become a Hitman, I didn't like Star Wars the film so am definitely not interested in playing it in Lego form and I don't even like watching the Olympics, let alone trying to make some little man do the pole vault by alternatively hitting the X and Y button (or whatever it is I was supposed to do).

Ok....wait....there is Guitar Hero which I do like so I'll let you have that one but it's a pain having to drag the drums out and I prefer the drums to the guitar. And I can't even play it on my own because I don't know how to switch you on properly. And I'm pretty sure that's your fault.

Why don't you have The Sims? I think I'd like that game. Or just something that doesn't involve shooting Germans or Russians or whoever the enemy du jour is. I don't like the shooting games. I get panicky and scream and end of throwing the controller (actually a true story when I tried the one and only time to play Lara Croft on the Playstation).

Well whatever. I know you're after him but you won't win.

....And I bet you can't make carrot cake.

So there.