I haven't blogged for a few months as I've mainly been eating Tolberone and working hard. But - I'm slowly weening myself back off the hard triangular stuff and coming back down to earth.
It's been eventful. Way back at the end of August in a far flung distant memory, we went to the South of France. The highlights included:-
1. Racing around the campsite on an oversized go-kart with Declan riding "side- car" on mine and Fintan in another.
2. Not explaining to Declan what happens when your two year old "side-car" pilot decides to lift up the handbrake at speed.
3. Going to the local beach...the main advice being..."drive down the beach and choose a nice spot by the sand-dunes...if you go too far and you see that no-one's wearing any clothes - well - that's the nudist part of the beach...if you go really too far and you get out and there are only men wandering around without any clothes on...you've gone to the nudist gay part of the beach". As it turned out - we went to the bit of the beach where it mainly blew 3 tonnes of sand into everyone's butt cracks and generally stuck to any and all areas of exposed flesh where suncream had been applied. We might as well have covered ourselves in treacle before we set off. Honestly - I'll never get the hang of beaches.
Towards the end of the holiday when Declan was getting a little more adventurous around the water (adventurous and stubborn is probably the more accurate term) - we had out first mini drama of the holiday (no family holiday is complete without a drama of some sort).
We were sitting by the pool watching Declan (who had up to that point shown an absolutely healthy fear of deep water) lean over and fall head first into the pool and then do his best impression of floating face down and not moving. The "Play Possum" instinct had kicked into overdrive.
Before I could shift a single toe and dive in and save him - Sarah had launched herself straight into the water (sundress and shades still on) and dragged him out.
For a brief moment I had considered jumping in to rescue both Sarah and Declan but decided that having a giant lump bellyflop on top of you was probably the last thing you needed in these sort of situations.
So we dragged him out and he coughed and spluttered and looked at us and said "I sinked Daddy!" In fact - he spent the entire day telling everybody he met just how brick-like he was in a water situation.
Fintan mainly explained that it was ok because he could have swum to the bottom and rescued him if Declan wanted. So even Fintan seemed to take to the "Brick" usage for Declan. For the rest of the holiday we tied an inflatable spider man rubber ring and two layers of cotton wool around him just in case.
I mainly enjoyed teaching the kids the "art" of making BBQ fire. This involved the three of us sitting around the sizzling meat as flames started licking up this rather blackened looking Olive tree by our chalet. Although I don't think this French cycling bloke was too impressed. He set up his tent and campfire just next to us and every night when he returned from his bike-riding exertions, every night he washed his clothes and hung them up proudly on his improvised washing line strung between the olive trees. And every night I created more bitter smoke and fire than was practically sensible even for a gas BBQ in the middle of a French tinderbox. And every morning he set off for his cycle with the acrid stench of BBQ'd chicken embedded in his jersey. Oops.
Still - what a holiday. I highly recommend any holiday located within a vinyard. Even if there was the collapse of all society - you'd still be within striking distance of at least ten thousand gallons of red wine! Wahoo! Easily enough time to hold out til everything settled.
Last week we set off to Llangollen so my father-in-law could drive a massive old steam train for the day. A small percentage of the Irish population travelled over to watch the special occassion - and most of us ended up on the train being driven by Frank. Which was quite a novelty. We sat in the "first class" carriage and I handed out "fingers of fudge" to the family whilst we waited for Hermione, Harry and Ron Weasley to turn up. We contemplated whether it was actually possible to call a finger of fudge "a fudge" and decided that it was humanly impossible. And then Sarah's brother Andrew and sister Karina encouraged everyone to stick their head out the moving train in turn whilst they took pictures.
Now - I don't know about you - but apart from a love of the fairly solid association my head enjoys with the rest of my body - I've also seen that episode of The Young Ones where Vivienne sticks his head out the train and gets decapitated. And I was keen not to watch that in real life. It was only when we actually went through a tunnel about a second before Sarah was about to stick her head out - that they finally stopped that game. And there I was relying on the sensible one to help me out (aka Deborah!).
We got to check out the footplate / hotplate (whatever they call it where the driver stands with all the coal and the furnace) which was pretty impresive and insanely hot.
"Flipping eck that's hot," I said to the Train man supervising Frank my father-in-law.
He stared at me in much the same way as a swimming instuctor would stare at a grown adult pointing out that the wet watery pool he'd just got into was "rather wet".
After that I attempted to sound vaguely knowledgeable about pressure certs for the engine and the grade of coal that worked best on this engine (Polish or Russian coal is best - although the Welsh coal is the ideal grade).
Before we knew it - we were rattling back to Llangollen and running down the empty carriages in delight. Andrew and I stopped off in the original Flying Scotsman bar carriage (wow - it must have been something in its day) and by 5 we were home and sinking a few jars and glasses of wine.
A pool tournament ensued - the highlight being after twenty minutes of play when Sally my mother-in-law attempted to pot the stripes using the black ball.
"I didn't know we had to use the white ball to pot them..." she told us through fits of giggles.
Later still - after waiting nearly seven hours for our take-away to turn up. I demonstrated my unique "putting a duvet cover on a duvet" technique. This (especially after a few jars) involves physically climbing inside the duvet cover to find the corners. And until someone invents an easier way of doing it - that's the way I'm gonna carry on doing it. All I'm gonna say is - hats off to those guys in the hotel industry and all those nurses. What a job - in and out of covers day in and day out. How many are accidentally zipped or buttoned up inside them to die a tragic death - we'll just never know...never...
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