I Heart Menorca

Touchdown! I survived the family holiday to Menorca.

Had to go on a wild goose chase round Plymouth the afternoon before we left, trying to pick up my Diazepam prescription for the flight. I'm convinced it would have been easier to score some heroin but eventually I got my fix. It might sound dramatic (who, me?!) but I HATE flying. I really can't describe how much I hate everything about it, pretty much from the moment of turning up at the departure airport right up until I walk out the doors into another country. It turns out that what makes flying even worse is being surrounded by your entire family, including a one year old and a three year old, all of whom could not care less about the fact they are on an aeroplane.

If I'm totally honest I was also a little worried about the whole prospect of the family holiday. I was sure it would rain for the entire week and we would all be couped up together in a villa, winding each other up.

Thankfully, we had brilliant sunshine almost every day and spent our time reading, swimming, sunbathing and exploring. Menorca is really anglicised - probably more than half the people we came into contact with were English - which, as a linguist, I find a bit of a shame, but I was expecting it to be characterless and built up, like the Costa Del Sol.  In fact, I was really surprised by how quaint and picturesque it was. One day I went for a drive with Skip and Mothership and we remarked how it felt like we were driving along a Mediterranean Dartmoor; single track roads, remote farm houses and fields separated by dry stone walls. I liked it so much I would happily go back. I've taken a few photos to show you what I mean. I'm not too good with the descriptives - I prefer to just take a picture.

We had a few hiccups during the week. The Mothership inexplicably turned into The Mothershits for 24 hours in spite of eating and drinking the same as everyone else. Then Squiffy came down with it a few days later, although I suspect that was more down to the fact he had eaten 4 yoghurts for his tea and drank about a litre of strawberry milkshake before going to bed.

We went to a glorious beach a couple of days in and of course the first thing I spotted as I strode into the turquoise water was a jellyfish (this literally happens every time I go to the beach in any country) so that pretty much ruined my enjoyment of that. Ironically, my anxiety levels go into overdrive on holiday. But I did still manage a little swim so I am proud of myself for that.

I also got to spend the week playing with my gorgeous nephews, JEdwards and Squiffy. JEdwards is a placid, contented, smiley, cuddly little chap and Squiffy is an adorable yet disobedient maniac.

One evening, mid-way through my eight-zillionth made-up bedtime story in an attempt to get Squiffy to go to sleep, he sat bolt upright, looked me in the eye and said "Perhaps I should go and look in that mirror to see if I look posh". No, I have no idea what he was on about either, but it was bloody funny.

I'm a touch embarrassed to admit we had a TV showing British telly so I am fully up to date with X Factor (more on THAT later), and I also found a shop that sold Cadbury's Flakes. But I feel I was entitled to these two indulgences because I spoke lots of Spanish as well.

OK, that's all for now as I'm off to meet some friends for coffees but I will, of course, be back later to talk about the total hoo ha that is the X Factor. I cannot wait to see what unfolds tonight!

Here's a pic of Jellyfish beach. I tried uploading more but it appears that in the week that I've been away the process I followed for the past 15 months has somehow changed and they are all coming out sideways. Will investigate and correct later. By that, I mean when Mr G gets up I will get him to fix it...

Say Hello to My New Friend, BOB

Had a lush weekend - drank loads of sparkly plonk round Mr & Mrs B's House on Friday night, had a little sit down in Mr B's massage chair, did a bit of opera singing with Mrs B... Yes, that's how it rolled on Friday.

Yesterday my friend and her little boy went to the park with me and my nephew Squiffy, who had some kind of temporary personality transplant into a calm, confident child. No need to panic, he was back to his usual wimpy self at Drake's Den today meaning I was pratting about in the soft play area on my own in a bid to coax him inside.

Also had my sister Hazel, brother-in-law and baby JEdwards over to stay last night as it was JEdwards's 1st birthday this week. Can't believe how fast the time has gone. JEdwards repaid me for not being able to afford him a proper birthday present by pooping in my bath last night.

So all in all, it's been a kid-heavy couple of days (hence the need for 2 snoozes today).

Got my hair chopped yesterday morning, into a bob. Naturally after I have washed it tonight it will never again look how it has this weekend, so had to get some pics - think you will be amused by the imposters in two of them...

Aquarium Blues

My nephew eventually turned up for our my much-anticipated trip to the National Marine Aquarium.

Squiffy has always seemed to me to be a very intelligent child. Before he was two you could have proper conversations with him, and he could count to ten in French before he could in English. As a three year old, he has an incredible vocabulary and sense of humour. However, because of this he gets bored easily and has started to understand the benefits to him of a well-timed tantrum. Having no children myself, this obviously makes me very well qualified to lecture my sister (who is equally as strong willed as her child) about the role she plays in dealing with these tantrums. Easy.

It was all going so well...
We walked down to the Barbican from town, stopping to take random photos (A Ford Escort, a stone...) on his V-Tech Camera and chattering away about how utterly excited we were to be going to the aquarium (amateurish attempt by me and Mr G to distract him from the fact he had a massive wobbler last time he went).

Inside, we were having loads of fun looking in rock pools, learning why some starfish only had four arms (legs?), and I even managed to nip in the bud the beginnings of a tantrum over a jigsaw, so started to feel quite smug at the obvious natural parenting gift me and Mr G seemed to have.

That was until Squiffy stopped dead in his tracks at the start of a dark gangway, clung to my legs and went
"I don't want to go down there!"

"What's the matter, poppet?" I asked

"I'm frightened! I don't want to go down there!" He whimpered.

This went on for a few minutes whilst several other, presumably sedated, children strolled past us. I could feel myself starting to get flustered as I realised we were probably about to encounter the giant shark hanging from the ceiling that had freaked him out a few weeks ago. This wasn't supposed to happen!

"Right, come on! We'll run through and Uncle G will go first to make sure it's safe" I sang enthusiastically.
"Come on Uncle G! Off we go!" And with that, I scooped up Squiffy and confidently trotted along towards the next exhibit.

The beginnings of a warble started to ring out around the auditorium as we stood at the top looking towards the giant tank and Squiffy spotted above us what had previously scared him. A giant model of a whale suspended from the ceiling, along with a killer whale. I tightened my grip around him in anticipation. And then:
"Oh. It's just a whale!" He said dismissively.

"YES! YES IT'S JUST A WHALE! HA HA HA THAT'S RIGHT! YES JUST A WHALE! HAHAHA" Me and Mr G laughed manically, simultaneously breathing massive sighs of relief whilst giving each other a knowing look - "Oh my God, we're going to be amazing parents!"

With a heartfelt reminder that if we all behaved we would be getting a special ice cream afterwards, I suggested that we go down and have a closer look at the fish. Everyone seemed to be in agreement so off we went. Suddenly, Squiffy spotted the model of the baby killer whale and stiffened.
And then the screaming started.
I looked at Mr G nervously. "What the...?"
Various attempts at distraction/ understanding/ ignoring/ laughing all failed miserably and by this point, we were standing in a high ceilinged auditorium with a three year old shouting between hysterical sobs, "I don't want to go to the aquarium ever again!".

When I realised nothing was working, we decided to move on to the next section, something of a tunnel, through which his cries of "The whale is scaring me!" could be heard echoing at either end.

Pretty soon I took the executive decision that we were leaving, and without saying anything to the screaming three year old, frantically tried to find the way out. I walked into a class room type thing where lots of Stepford families were sat peacefully cutting out fish shapes and gluing glitter to them, that was until my nephew hollered "I hate the aquarium!" and they all stopped what they were doing to look at me disapprovingly. Realising this was not, in fact the way out, I chortled loudly as if I was totally in control of the whole situation and not at all bothered, and finally found what I thought was the way out.

After a bit more foot stamping, wailing and rolling around on the floor (all of which I had to pretend to ignore), I realised this was not in fact, the way out, and I was now trapped in a garden with an agitated child, needing a wee, and the only way out was back through the bloody whale room. What the hell was I supposed to do now? This was not in the "Tantrums" book I'd read in preparation the night before.

Mr G finally caught us up after staying behind to find the sharks, and like a military operation we whisked him through practically the entire aquarium and back to the outside world. As our luck would have it, the bridge over to the Barbican was closed for a boat to go through so we were able to stand amongst the crowds of waiting people (aka a massive audience) as my nephew declared to everyone that he was not catching the bus home, but was going to walk the two miles instead.

"Alright love?!" I laughed to a stressed out Mr G.
"Just so you know, I'm still having an ice cream!" He informed me.

And so we sat there, feeling evil as we hastily woofed back our ice creams, giving ourselves brain freeze in front of a totally unbothered toddler, to teach him a very valuable lesson.

The lesson I learned from that entire episode was that as many people have long suspected,  I have absolutely no idea how to look after a child and am now seriously reconsidering my own plans to start a family.

As quickly as it started, the tantrum was over. We then had fun on the bus home and the rest of the afternoon passed by without any further incident.

Later that evening after Fiver had been to pick up Squiffy, my friend came to pick me up for an evening out at around 5:30 and I was sound asleep. Presumably dreaming about all the stuff I missed at the Aquarium...

3 Year Old Oversleeps

You might ask what I'm doing up this early on a Saturday morning. Indeed, I asked myself a similar question when my alarm went off.

I got up at 8am to prepare for the arrival of my nephew, Squiffy, as me and Mr G are taking him out for the day... We're going to the Aquarium. I'm really looking forward to it because I've been once but it was years ago, so it should be fun.

Around half 8, when I had got myself ready and started my attempts to "toddler-proof" the house (last time he was here, he poured nail varnish all over my living room), my sister text me as planned to let me know they were on their way. I read the text. They were not on their way. My nephew was still asleep!

Something's not right here. How can I be more excited than a three year old?!

Actually, he went to the aquarium with his pre-school a couple of weeks ago and by all accounts he had a massive wobbler over a big shark display right near the entrance and his Dad had to take him home shortly after arriving...

Fingers crossed there won't be a repeat performance today! Rest assured, there'll be a story out of it later.