amy and i have booked in a holiday. we are heading off on a jetplane to the south of spain in a couple of weeks time. in my head i expect glistening spanish vistas, sandy white beaches and being served sangria and moonlight walks interspersed with polite conversation with the locals. in reality we all know how holidays tend to go. here is my ten point list of things that need to happen on holiday for it to be a real holiday.
1. you will arrive at your apartment and the first thing you will do is turn on the tv to see what mtv looks like in another country (aka the european coca cola test)
2. your first trip to the beach will ensure that you spend the initial couple of days looking like a lobster covered in jam
3. also at the beach, you will have sand kicked all over your face by little five year old ‘wayne’ from doncaster. you then seem to be in all the same restaurants as this evil northern family. they grind down your patience so much that you now have tinnitus from turning up your ipod in a futile attempt to drown out their inane northern banter. they too look like lobsters.
4. you will think it is a great idea to spend forty euros on a giant inflatable crocodile, much to the dismay of your girlfriend.
5. you will go to any lengths to make sure your other half doesn’t see the signs for ‘traditional local market – tuesday’. she will see it. you will spend four hours wandering around a car park so hot your eyes melt looking at awful tourist items such as towels with cannabis leaves, t shirts with 2pac and assorted brown leather handbags with beads and colourful stitching. your girlfriend will buy one to get you back for the crocodile.
6. although you have made a mammoth attempt to eat as the locals do your lower intestines have plans of their own. you start having to plan out your journeys ‘in-case you get caught short’
7. you may have been spending most of your time trying to fit into the local culture but at least once you will find yourself in the local ex-pat bar (probably called ‘o mulligans’ or ‘lineker’s’ dependent on whether they serve guinness or carling). You will be so drunk that you start to really think that moving to the town and becoming part of the community is a good idea. you will be given free sugary rum and cokes by the landlady ‘pat’ who will bore you all night about how no-one knows more about northern soul than she does.
8. you will, no matter how hard you try not to, go to a waterpark on the outskirts of town. your sunburn will at this point be beyond unbearable and as you fly down the plastic pipes you will feel like you just gone through a torture scene with jack bauer.
9. you will spill sun tan lotion all over your book on the spanish civil war. you weren’t clever enough to read that anyway. you’ll read harry potter instead.
10. the end of the holiday. you book a taxi hosted by a sweaty twenty five stone beast named juan. he will shout at you in a dialect so obscure he makes ‘teletubby’ look like it belongs on the uk schools curriculum. half way to the airport you then realise that your left over euros and passports are still in the safe at the apartment. you miss your flight.
i totally don’t expect any of this stuff to happen to us though as it is our first trip abroad on our own and it will be magical and special.
one of the worst things about being poor is that you have to eat lots of really bad food. by the second week of the month i was starting to have vitamin deficiency due to the huge intake of beige food groups and nothing that event resembled a vegetable. inevitably i eventually snapped and went on a tasty, healthy food shopping binge buying spree. the first night result of which was my legendary vegetarian chili. amy has just started to get into spicy food so i’m starting to raise the heat on some of my dishes a little bit more each time. suffice to say this lovely treat blew both of our heads off. i might post the recipe up here is anyone is interested.
