1st Annual holiday of 2019

Last week we headed to Lanzarote in the Spanish Canary Islands for our first annual family holiday of 2019.

I say first annual holiday of 2019 as ‘The Marvelous Mummy’ has found positives in the mess that is Brexit & booked two bargain vacation deals for this year, with the second coming in July. I gave up telling her she has more holidays than Judith Chalmers, when she ruined my witty quip by claiming not to know who that is. The resulting explanation was then met with the most vacant of blank stares, which is when I invariably give up.

Anyway, this 1st annual family holiday went pretty much like all the rest of them, 7 nights half board with a mixture of sun, sea and begging the kids to bugger off for a couple of hours to the mini club!

Didn’t work......

During the trip as I sat by the pool on Lifeguard duty, which for the uninitiated, involves watching the lifeguard to ensure they are watching my kids in the pool. It’s not that I don’t trust them to do their job but If anything happens to the two dementors, that poor baywatch wannabe will have the Marvelous one to answer to & unless they can do CPR on themselves then the S.O.S on their hoody & their Defib is gonna be as useful to them as an igloo in the desert...

While watching him watching them, my mind began to wander as I flicked through my copy of TIME magazine (N.B well known fact, buying time magazine before a flight ensures your aircraft will arrive safely 👈 that is unquestionable logic & my only irrational ritual in life) As i sat there baking slowly like an athletic rotesserie Chicken, I was struck by what a strange old breed humans are. Toiling away all year, so we can spend a week or two in a sunny climate, where we lay like oil coated bacon on a pan under the skin cancer generating sun as we try to turn ourselves a shade of brown, ultimately ending up bright red & in pain as our skin begins to peel off our bodies!

If we are extra especially mental we repeat this sun worship on the beach, where like cream covered treats dipped into sprinkles we attract squillions of sand grains into our sweating bits and pieces & all in the name of chilling out!

Invariably we will head home, 5-7 shades darker, still in sunburnt agony with sand in your ass to tell everyone what a brilliant time we had, slowly cooking ourselves, under the Earths grill. Singing the praises of the hotel & All inclusive packages which everyday challenged us to attack several meals a day at the Buffett restaurant like food is going out of fashion, wiping out the progress of the diet we spent (some of us) all year on to have a beach body on holiday!

We haven’t even touched on how 20 years later those of us unlucky enough to be diagnosed with skin cancers will sit open mouthed in the Doctors office processing the information like it’s completely unexpected. Despite the lifetime we spent putting in the groundwork for our own misfortune, while on holiday.

I’m not even gonna address the diplomatic incident that is sunbed etiquette.

On that note, this holiday weight carrying lobster is gonna peel himself off the sofa and order some new shorts, my current pair are a little tight & Judy is taking me on another trip soon