holidays

Assumptions

/ aspinalllucy / Leave a comment

I was sitting minding everyone else’s business in a hotel bar/eatery at Gatwick airport the other evening.

People watching is one way of describing it. I like to try and think what the story is behind people sitting there.

The Best Beloved and I were staying the night, before venturing to an unknown-to-us destination but more of that another time.

Anyway, I glanced over to the check-in desk and saw two women and two men.

The two men were clean cut, short haired and good looking in a kind of neutral way and likewise the women, though they had long hair pulled into glossy, and unsurprisingly, very tidy buns.

Mormon missionaries, I thought (instantly).

Going home to Utah having perhaps spent time in Crawley, Billingshurst, Croydon and for time off for good behaviour some of the villages of the Surrey Hills.

I speculated on their reports to the Elders’ committee.

How many times did they turn up on someone’s doorstep, say their spiel, get invited in for a cup of tea and hear, ‘ This is such a revelation, I had no idea. Where do I sign and when can I join?’

Meanwhile, a large group had been gathering in the seating areas around where we were sitting.

People joined in twos and threes and fours and all seemed to know at least a few other people.

At first I thought it would be a family gathering, but as more and more people arrived, that didn’t make sense.

There was no obvious common factor – older, younger, men, women, rather smart, not so bothered about that sartorial nonsense, tall, short, all white and middle class. 

Indeed one of the women who seemed to know everyone and as I watched morphed into the woman in charge, was dressed in an ill-fitting tracksuit.

Not that there is anything wrong with that but if you had asked me to pick out the leader it wouldn’t have been her. 

However, the trim looking young man – well, in his 40s which was young by the group’s standards – I would have earmarked into the role and indeed he was joint organiser.

Assumptions/prejudices all my own.

They were bussed out to the terminal to check in with their passports and luggage and then came back for a group meal which a few of them declined in favour of a beer and an early night.

Several women had been sitting next to us and one – in her late 60s and very elegantly casual had declared it is past six o’clock ‘ where we are going’ so lets order some wine.

So, who were they and where were they going?

In the end curiosity got the better of me and I gently tugged at her sleeve as they stood to go to check in and asked her.

It was an amalgamation of three golf club’s members going to Portugal for 10 days of sun and teeing off.

I was a bit disappointed.

I had already mentally tried on a group of witches and wizards based on one person’s green and pink hair and the off-beat religious theme which I had already got going in my head.

And I really liked the idea there wizards in slacks and colourful.

In a widely optimistic thought on behalf of the Best Beloved, I had hoped they might be the inaugural convocation/convention of peripheral neurology specialists from across the country who were looking for people about whom they could do an in-depth study and treat at the same time.

Retired stand-up comedians, the world-renowned group who between them decided on all the bizarre paint shade names we have these days – remember elephant breath?

Graham Greene super fans.

Or a jolly and interesting group of people who might end up in the same resort and hotel we were going to.

Anyway, golf in Portugal it was, and I hope they are having a very good time.

Once they had left, I was left with a group of Chinese looking young men sitting on stools around a table and eating a mix of pizza and dumplings.

They looked as if food was a fuel rather than a culinary delight and they were dressed in T shirts with random slogan and decorations. 

They were, I decided some kind of manual workers, eating and then going to get some rest before they had to start again on whatever they were doing.

I wondered what workers they were, and why Chinese – on the basis that you don’t see many manual Chinese workers in Britain.

But they, and we, had eaten and gone before I got much time to speculate.

Well, dear reader imagine my surprise when my Mormons turned out to be an long haul aircraft crew and likewise my Chinese workers appeared in uniforms with lots of gold braid (and I noticed on the departures board there was a flight to Shanghai).

It was a Gatwick airport……

Did I Tell You About My Holiday?

/ aspinalllucy / 2 Comments

I will start with the apology that we were lucky enough to be able to go to Florence and surrounding areas in September.

Now the apology is over, I can tell you some stuff about it.

So, as I was saying, we got to go to Italy when there were few other tourists – well there were some young German professionals who had driven down to Italy – some not so much working from home as working from the terrace of a pleasant agro-tourisma.

I could show off about the places we got to stay which we would never normally be able to afford or book. Shall I ? Oh, you look less than enthusiastic at the prospect of me boasting.

Are you sure you don’t want to see some photos? Really no? OK then, I will move on…

But just let me tell you this. Because there was no queue and not many people, there was space and time to look at some pictures. I won’t go on about the big stuff but look at this. Who’d have thought – Mark Rylance in the Uffizi.

Anyway, moving on, I am an atheist but the Best Beloved and I do like to visit a church. 

And there were some very fine examples in Italy ( did I mention we were there in September?…)

I do like a good fresco and some of them were very fine indeed.

This is the drunkenness of Noah. I didn’t know anything about this biblical story so I looked it up and it turns out there are various interpretations including this one which I find a bit hard to believe:

Another explanation offered is that Noah was after the cognitive powers that could be harnessed through alcohol, wanting to broaden his horizons in the study of Torah.

Now I know that whilst any one of us can believe that we are much more witty and erudite when we have had a drop too much – we would be wrong – but I can’t ever recalling anyone I know thinking that a gallon of wine was going to sharpen their brains to the point where they could study complex theological texts to get never before known insights.

Then there is this explanation:

Noah wasn’t trying to imbibe spirits to lift his own. He also wasn’t looking to drink in moderation to jump-start his brain. Noah’s plan from the beginning was to go all in, to get completely under-the-table, stripped-down-to-the-flesh plastered.

Having witnessed extreme depravity and immorality, and the destruction it left in its wake, Noah had come face to face with the consequences of sin. Noah got drunk (and subsequently disrobed) as an ambitious attempt to return the world to the innocent time before sin. He was trying to undo and reverse the negative effects of Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden.

Really? Let’s get really drunk and drive out all sin. I think you need a stronger drug to be able to convince yourself of that.

Anyway, in the same church there was this lovely fresco marred only by the fact that Jospeh seems to be having his dream whilst covered by a rather cheap and nasty duvet cover. ( Sorry, if it  matches the one you love most.)

Indeed that duvet cover seems to have been all the rage with San Gimignano painters as look, here is another one.

(Job lot at the local Dunelm maybe.)

Now, this one is part of the decoration in a bedroom and the series of frescos  which are the equivalent of a wedding day photo album.

An interesting way to start your wedding day is apparently riding on your new husband’s back and beating him. I make no comment, but clearly the onlookers in the bird hide are somewhat surprised.

I am impressed he keeps his hat on throughout the whole series of events…..

I love this next one because that young man has clearly just remembered he has forgotten his mother’s birthday, or to renew his MOT, or any number of things we have all forgotten with Covid brains.

What exactly he is doing sitting at the bedside of someone who insists on wearing his hat of office in bed, is anyone’s guess.

I used to work for the National Rivers Authority and learned quite a bit about flooding – and the misery a flooded home – so I am interested in San Frediano and his rake.

This ex-Irish prince-come-hermit was appointed the bishop of Lucca.

( I can tell you of a lovely place to stay in Lucca if you wanted some holiday information, just saying.)

Anyway the good people of Lucca came to said bishop and asked if he could do anything about the flooding of the River Serchio and Fred ( as I am sure his friends called him) took a rake to the river’s edge.

The legend goes that he persuaded the river to follow his rake and took it away from the danger zone.

There are all sorts of things I could say about movement of water courses in flood plains and displaced water and canalising rivers and the impact and so on and so on. But I won’t bore you.

What I will say is that by the looks of the strapping lads and the work going on, the bishop was smart enough to get a few more flood resources to hand than just his rake.

And finally, there are times when you need a break from church visiting.

Going on Holiday

/ aspinalllucy / Leave a comment

I’m sure that a ‘what I did on my holidays’ is one of the lowest forms of blogging but that seems to be pretty much all I have done for the last few weeks – and yes, I do know that boasting about your holidays is also pretty low too.

Anyway, should you want to skip a few blogs on the basis that this is not for you, feel free, but here goes with some holiday notes.

Packing used to be one of my skills. When I was young, oh so many years ago, I had a job which demanded a lot of travelling and so could pack a neat bag with all the necessary requirements for any situation in about 10 seconds flat.

Now, oh so many years later, I am hopeless. I over-pack and come home with a lot of unused but badly creased stuff, or I pack the wrong things and shiver or sweat, or I take all the wrong earrings.

As a woman who likes her jewellery (let me tell you about the Accessorize necklace which was smuggled out of Russia during the revolution, sometime,) I do like to have the right bits with the right clothes.

Anyway, as the holiday before last, we were glamping, the choices were fairly easy and indeed you do need things you can pull on the tramp across wet grass for the first pee of the morning. And stuff which you can get off easily and hang up to avoid getting it wet on the shower floor.

This last holiday (a few days in Normandy) was a bit trickier not least as we have a rough and ready attitude to planning.

We get a guide book or (some) off the shelf, book a crossing or a flight, get a car or take ours and that is it as far as planning goes.

The flight or channel-crossing are the times to look in the books and decide what to do.

(This has worked well for us on the whole, but it has meant some rather dodgy accommodation – as well as amazing places to stay – remind me to tell you about dinner with the Mafia in Sicily sometime.)

We decided to drive down past Rouen and stay in a place called Conches, recommended in our old Rough Guide to France.

All was fine. (French motorways are a delight compared to ours. Their surfaces are nice, they are quiet and people generally use lane discipline – what more can I say.)

We found a Logis and although the room was basic and there were a lot of dried flowers about the place, the food was lovely.

Though I have to say that in Normandy it is a choice of whether to have cream with your cheese or cheese with your cream – not exactly on-plan when you are supposed to be losing weight, but hey ho.

Over dinner, we got out an Alistair Sawday guide to France dating from 2010 which had appeared from somewhere on our shelves back home.

There was an entry for a B&B run by a woman who used to be an antiques dealer – that was enough for me. I like a woman who has spent her life around Brocantes and would watch Antiques Roadshow religiously if they had it in France.

It turned out to be in a very nice but isolated village ( see all of inland Normandy) and there was a collection of houses in a large garden.

Our large room had a (very large) en suite bathroom with walls covered (very interestingly) in striped, bright orange silk.

We had our own dinning room where we were served a very nice three course meal on both nights, with very nice bottle of wine and Calvados to take to bed – all of six steps away….. and it came in at the princely sum of 200 euros all in for both of us, and the dog, for two nights. Not bad at all.

Now, I must say that I am a fan of the Rough Guide but I do take issue with them on one point.

There was mention of a Monday market at a town called Vimoutiers. There was also mention of a Richard the Lionheart castle the other side of the region.

One morning over breakfast we had a sotto voce tiff over whether to walk up to the castle and get some exercise or to go to a French market – I do like a market.

In the end we agreed to do both though it involved several hours of driving.

Castle, fine, as described and indeed lovely views. (There is some historical debate about whether those who finally took it came in through the toilet or an open chapel window and it takes no time at all to think about which would be preferable in a Medieval castle.)

Market, not so fine. I should have realised that a market on a Monday was unlikely but the French will have a market at the drop of a hat, so it should have been OK. Infact it was a market but of the tattiest bling market clothes you ever did see. Not a fresh fruit or veg in sight. Thank God, I agreed to do the castle or I would never have heard the last of it.

And it was the market that lowered that bit of Normandy from a promising B to a C+ and in fairness, a lot of the blame for that lies at the door of the Rough Guide.

A is a place you would move to at the drop of a hat. B is a place which you wouldn’t be sorry to be sent to. C is a place which would cause a deep intake of breath, but you know you could make the best of despite a few things which are not at all right, and D is the equivalent of being sent to Walsall or indeed Warsaw.

I am sure everyone has those kinds of ratings and you probably didn’t need to know mine, but I give them in a spirit of generosity to anyone who has made it to the end of this bit of tales of my holidays. Thank you

Going