I could bore the arse off anyone bothering to read this blog by going into minute detail about two weeks in Portugal’s Praia de Luz but here are the potted highlights:
Day 1: Cab from home to Gatwick and that was the last reliable transport we saw for 24 hours. The Monarch plane was buggered, the trolley carrying the suitcases was wonky and the coach that took us to the overnight hotel because of the plane delay took an hour to find us. It was a transport black hole and my family could have become part of a seething mass of 370-odd passengers! Remarkably, however, we remained quite relaxed about it all. Even the missus – and she can go off over me brushing my teeth too loudly. Honest…
Day 2: The plane finally takes off to cheers of relief from our Gatwick-stranded mob then lands three hours later to more cheering. Inbetween a very nervous but polite pilot pleads for the passengers to be nice to his cabin crew. ‘It’s not their fault you were delayed…’ he simpers. We arrive at the place. It is very sweet but populated with ex-pats. Like a posher version of the Costa Del Sol.
Day 3: The beach starts 10ft from our apartment. The sea is 60ft away – and it’s sodding freezing. It’s off the Atlantic and not the Mediterranean. But when I observe local children putting up with it I see it as a matter of national pride that I venture in and stay, remarking as often as I can that ‘It’s not as bracing as Cleethorpes in March!’ People stare. Oddly…
Day 4-5: We find a quiet pool nearby. We stay here under a kabana, read, swim and relax. Sadly, somewhere during this time I manage to burn my legs to buggery. My head and shoulders are brown, my body is white and my legs are bright red. I look like a Dulux colour chart. ‘Here’s fiery red flesh but he doesn’t like albino white because he’s got his eyes on sultry brown.’ I suffer in silence…
Day 6: Met the older retired couple next door who are our neighbours. I was training in the private courtyard area outside our apartment, which their apartment overlooks, and they offered to lend me their copy of The Sun.
‘That’s very kind but I don’t like the paper. Thank-you for the offer, though.’
They looked a little perplexed but I later got talking to the guy who’s a former Army chap and retired policeman. He told that he didn’t like Scotsmen running the UK, he didn’t like socialists and he didn’t like immigrants. I very politely told him I had no problem with Brown as Chancellor and that I was pretty much a socialist.
I then offered the view that immigrants prop up the National Health Service and all manner of other UK industries and that perhaps if we didn’t go around the world exploiting already impoverished countries and making them even poorer then perhaps so many people wouldn’t need to come over here.
He hasn’t offered to lend me his paper since.
Day 7: The boy provided the comedy highlight of the week so far when we were on our way back from a meal out and we passed an English pub having a quiz night. The question “What was the one-word spin-off series from Buffy The Vampire Slayer?’ and as we walked past the door the boy screamed ‘Angel!’ We walked on but I did catch a flicker of the entire pub turning round to see where this disembodied voice had come from which was now echoing around the narrow street.
No comments:
Post a Comment