holiday fun

driving the boat, originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

hello dear readers! i have been receiving complaints from some of you that i have been remiss in my blogging of late for which i can only apologise. we have been away on our hols and since getting back herself has been completely manic with 101 projects, none of which she ever finishes. i have finally pinned her down with the laptop under the threat that i will be sick on the sofa if she doesn't update my blog.

our hols were in suffolk. in the picture you can see us on a boat on the norfolk broads. my boy is driving. while it looks like himself is blocking my ears in case any expletives should damage my tender sensibilities, in fact i am half way through being stroked.

the hols got off to a bit of a shaky start. regular readers will know that the peeps are in the habit of camping. this is a laudible way to holiday, being both environmentally sound and also healthy. however there is a lot of kit involved. getting the car filled up and setting off can be a little stressful, so much so that the peeps would nearly always end up having a major domestic before even leaving the house.

herself decided a couple of years ago to purchase a trailer. the idea was that the trailer would be kept permanently loaded with the camping gear so that when we were going away it would simply need to be attached to the car and off we would go, grinning inanely just like the families in the adverts on telly. herself is nothing if not a sucker for images of happy families.

as the peeps had no-where to keep the trailer out of the rain it was also necessary to purchase a shed for it to live in. mick the builder was prevailed upon, as he was involved in some mad scheme of herself's at the time, to fashion a little ramp down which the trailer could be rolled, on account of it being too heavy to lift when fully loaded.

so when the time came for the peeps to go off camping the trailer was duly loaded up. herself called himself to help pull it out of the shed. as it rode over the lip of the shed there was a sudden pop followed by a loud hiss. the trailer tyre had found the only nail in 100 yards and got a puncture.

himself hit the roof. "oh well, thats it then! we can't go now! f***ing thing! " and more of the same, all at too loud a volume for the drive. herself is making a superhuman effort not to react when himself loses the plot. it is because of his dodgy kidneys rather than because he is an evil tyrant. she therefore, as calmly as possible, told himself to go indoors. she then got the trailer emptied again and took the wheel off. she drove down to the local garage and asked if they could repair it. it sounded unlikely but the man said he would try. herself pulled over on the way back and rang mrs prof, who the peeps were due to meet, to alert her to a possible later eta than had been planned.

when she got home himself had calmed down sufficiently to engage his brain and suggested they simply go in 2 cars. herself jumped at this suggestion. the domestic on the drive at the beginning of holidays has a habit of being repeated throughout the journey, with postmortems on who started it.

my boy was asked who he would like to travel up to suffolk with. "i'll go with mummy in case daddy goes nuts again," he said firmly, "and mummy lets me play music in her car." i pulled the short straw and got to travel with himself, although he tends to be much nicer to me than to herself. she jokes that i think i am his wife. this is obviously rubbish - he never shouts at me and he strokes me all the time and smiles at me and makes cooing noises, none of which seems to be the lot of a wife.

herself and my boy went bombing off towards the a12. on the m25 there was a huge traffic jam. my boy rang himself a couple of times to tell him that the 2 cars thing was working well as himself would have been snarling at the traffic and winding herself up. it seems my boy and herself were playing loud rock music and wagging their heads, much to the amusement of other drivers. they got this habit from flat eric, a yellow creature of dubious provenance who lives in my boy's room.

when they finally got out of the traffic and onto the a12 my boy persuaded herself to stop so he could have a pee. they swung into a service station. "oh god!" said herself, "this is where we got the lorry magazine for you last time!" what she meant was that this was a trucker's garage and as well as lorry magazines there are a lot of magazines with ladies wearing gear that would be more suited to bull terriers. my boy had made loud remarks about these on the previous visit, causing a swift exit.

luckily there was no-where to park. herself promised my boy they could stop in a lay by and went to what looked like the exit. however this turned out to be the drive-thru for macdonalds. not only can macdonalds not spell 'through' properly but they make what my boy calls plastic food. the only time herself has eaten in a macdonalds in her life was in hong kong when she had a sudden desire for scrambled eggs and hash browns. the detour via the drive-thru therefore caused much mirth.

as they approached the area where the campsite was the phone rang. herself was listening avidly to a programme about discalculia. this means you have a bit of an issue with numbers. herself needs a calculator to add up how many toes she has so she was very interested in why this might be. my boy interrupted. "its daddy," he whispered. "tell him i'll call him back," said herself, turning up the radio. "he insists on speaking to you now!" said my boy.

herself said she would not be bossed around like some 1950s housewife and would ring himself back. there was a lot of swearing and yelling. what herself did not know was that himself had been trying for the last hour to erect the tent with the prof and mrs prof in a force 9 gale and that he wanted to know where the tent pegs were. he tried, through gritted teeth, to explain this to my boy over the phone.

my boy tried valiantly to distract herself's attention. "don't distract me! i've wondered why i can't add up for 50 years!" she said, neglecting to mention that she has only been alive for 48 years, and for some of those she did not yet know she could not add up. i suppose such mistakes are to be expected in one with discalculia.

anyway, they eventually arrived at the campsite, with the tent pegs, and for the next half hour the peeps and the profs hung gamely onto a corner of the huge tent each, trying not to get blown away. i was left in the back of the car in the warm, which i was very grateful for.

no sooner had the tent been tamed than the wind dropped and the sun came out. the peeps got things sorted out and then himself went along to the washing up place to have a look around. he came back much reassured.

"there were these two guys washing up who looked like bikers. one of them was saying to the other one 'the person at the stores told me to go down the road and kill it. i couldn't believe it when i got there - it was a level 16 hydra!' " whereas most people would be alarmed at sharing a campsite with murderers, himself knew where these guys were coming from. apparently it was some reference to a computer game. he had found some like-minded folks...