Sharky likes Yorkshire Lemon Cheese (lemon curd from the fudge shop). I should have got him a jar of his own, but I bet he would still try and muscle in on mine.
I said to Mum it was a good holiday despite all our nitpicking about sleeping arrangements, shoogly tables, no soap being provided, almost no hot water, a toaster that only toasted one side of the bread, an oven whose door wouldn’t open when you tried to get the supper out, not enough hangers, the house being on the dark side except for the upstairs sitting room, dull and rainy weather two days out of three, dryer not to be used (for whatever reason), torch batteries run down and not replaced, Harpic nearly finished, rotting bench out the back, wash basins being too small and set so far back so that you couldn’t turn the taps properly, carpet not being properly hoovered in my room when we got to York (ugh), and the only carpet cleaning solutions in the house being Woolite and a Vanish stick.
“Oh yes, very nice,” Mum agreed.
I added it was the first holiday we’ve ever had in which we didn’t have a blazing row over nothing.
She thought about this for a second or two and then laughed, and said “yes, you did VERY well. And E too. Usually you are the one who starts mumping first, and then E goes all silent. But this year I didn’t really want to go home, and could have stood an extra two days.”
I was speechless with all this praise. True, I tend to get a little ‘mumpy’ about nothing much, but I remember plenty of times when I was reasonably relaxed and friendly, and suddenly got roared at for not hearing, or for missing something that was said. I’m not perfect, but I’m not always the loudest or the grumpiest.
Maybe we got on better because it was a bigger house which we could spread out in, and because I got a break from the other two on Thursday. That trick might be worth remembering for future holidays. Also when you’re thinking “I could blog about this”, your humour tends to stay good…
Of course the house had its plus points and we weren’t nit-picking the entire time. The car was easily parked. There was that lovely view from the back, and the patio. The sofas upstairs had spring-out foot rests. There was a ‘proper’ shower downstairs which was lovely and hot, but I think I was the only one to use it as the others prefer baths (they had to carry hot kettles to make sure the bath was hot enough). In particular, we loved the fact that both televisions in the house were subtitled.
In the past it was almost unheard of to find a Teletext television in a holiday house. It’s not that holiday house owners have stopped to think about this and changed their habits – it’s just that all modern sets (digital) have subtitles now. It’s that easy, really. Incorporate the technology wherever possible. It shouldn’t be optional.
Comments for this entry (during its life on Blogigo):
1. Pete wrote at Jun 2, 2007 at 20:14: you looked for carpet cleaner !!
2. Diddums wrote at Jun 2, 2007 at 20:46: I had to – I spilt my stout…
3. Bunnyman wrote at Jun 4, 2007 at 19:27: It’s funny how blogging has that effect. Those things I would once have ignored or gone into a huffy about, I now try to work out whether they’d make good blogging material, which makes me see things quite differently.
4. Diddums wrote at Jun 4, 2007 at 20:21: Blogging seems to be a mechanism for making us step back and see the funny side of things – and I didn’t realize for a while that it was doing that. Mostly we think of it as a way of ordering our thoughts, protesting, or letting off steam.
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