Have a Jolly Holiday with Katy

The car is packed to groaning point. I am trying to save us some of the tedium of the first holiday shop by sticking olive oil, bottles of wine, washing powder etc round the cheese grater and tea towels.

I have visions of us arriving at a well stocked Waitrose in a foreign clime, and pleasantly waltzing round the supermarket picking fine cheeses and other perishables, all of which will fit neatly in one, hand held basket and laughing at other people laden down with day to day boring things.  I will be congratulating myself on my foresight and planning, and the children will be cherubim sent down from on high.

The reality is that we will drive ninety eight times round an impenetrable one way system, where we can see the supermarket, but not find any human way to reach it short of constructing a new road out of the car’s floor mats.  By the time we arrive we will be fraught beyond belief and the children’s swearing vocabulary will have come on alarmingly.

Once there we will fail to do even the simplest thing without conflict. We will fight and argue our way round the aisles like warriors planning a surprise attack, badly.  There will be disagreement over everything from what kind of cheese to buy to whether pink milk is necessary for our survival.  Oscar and Tallulah will be shouting the equivalent of ‘rip their bloody ‘eads off,’ to nobody in particular. Tilly will be saying: ‘I’m sure everything is very nice really.’  I’ll be saying: ‘I’ve got a blinding headache. I’m going to lie down until the weather’s better.  We’ll do it tomorrow.’  There will be a great deal of noise and skirmishing.

I will be constantly on the defensive as the children furtively try to fill the trolley with Haribo Star Mix, and I empty it out on one side as the children throw it in the other.

At one point, someone will weep.

It will probably be me.

I will find three thousand things that are necessary to my survival and buy them all, despite probably being given a kitchen the size of a broom cupboard, and it already being full of stuff I have bought with me.  We will then spend the next six days tripping over small, artisanal jars of rouille, just because I thought it looked tasty, but have nothing to cook it with.

We will get to the house, only to find that I can cook a three course meal with no difficulty whatsoever, but the children will be forced to wear pairs of pants tied together with baler twine to adequately cover their naked, shivering forms because I will be bound to have forgotten crucial things like clothes.

In the meantime I have crossed off nearly everything on my list.  The fridge has been detoxed. The bread bin has been emptied.  I have taken the bins out.

Hopefully nothing will rise up and kill Derek while we are away.

Except Granny, who has been left with the onerous task of looking after her in our absence.

Granny will be popping in, several times a day to feed and entertain Derek and keep her litter tray from melting.

Granny is already worrying that Derek will be lonely.  I do not worry that Derek will be lonely, because I know granny of old.  Granny will start off with a little light visiting, and by the time we get back next Friday, Derek will be astride a small, hand crafted throne at granny’s house while grandad brings her chocolate brioche on a silver tray, and Robert slaves away in the kitchen preparing carpaccio of beef for her next course.

Then, when Derek realizes she has to come home with us, the people who only feed her cat food, there will be a revolution and possibly a siege, with granny and grandad being held hostage while Derek roams the ramparts shouting; ‘You’ll never take me alive.’

That is how it will go.

Right. We’re off to the wilds of Gloucestershire my darlings.

I may or may not be blogging while I am away.  They say they have Wifi.  This does not always mean that they have Wifi, and until Jason arrives on Monday night it will be largely irrelevant anyway, as I am useless with technology, even when it is there.

Advertisement