The Time Bubble

So, Saturday dawned after our first night in the caravan, and as on the previous day it was glorious sunshine and blue skies all the way. So we decided to go and have a walk round the local area, and found ourselves at the beach. Now this is the first time Jamie had been on a beach since he could walk, back in Ibiza last May it sounds amazing but he was only crawling back then. Croyde Beach is one of those which is very flat and therefore the tide goes in and out a long way. Now we had not gone prepared for the beach on that day i.e. no swimming costumes or towels, but decided to have a walk on it anyway. Whilst Ollie was happy collecting his "treasures" (shells, stones etc) Jamie instantly made a beeline for that great big wet thing in the distance i.e. the sea. Now I was messing about at this point trying to get the video camera to work. As Jamie approached the water's edge it was clear he had no intention of stopping, and ran straight on in - complete with shoes ...

So - having crossed Exmoor, newly repaired wing mirror still attached, we approached our next destination. Being self-catering though, we needed to stop off for some supplies, so in the newly acquired sunshine, google maps led us to Tesco at Ilfracombe. And what a momentous occasion this turned out to be. As finally my beloved Eastmans and I were reunited! Alive and well in Devon. Yes, indeed, it appeared that since leaving me so cruelly without warning earlier in the Spring, my beloved Eastmans had been living a well deserved retirement on the shelves of Tesco in Ilfracombe. It was to be but a brief reunion, just two packets, but I am glad we had the chance to say goodbye. She was very understanding too, and understood about my new relationship with the 15 pack multipacks of Wotsits from Iceland. Well a man has needs...and they were there for me when she wasn't. So - eventually after winding around lots of little roads with passing places, we arrived at Ruda Caravan Par...

This is a first for a blog entry from me. I am not actually typing this at all. I am actually using Dragon dictation software which is working fantastically. I actually bought this software about 18 months ago. But shortly afterwards my computer died and I bought a new one. I neglected to install the software on the new computer until today, so it's been sitting unused all that time. It really is an amazing piece of software. I am hardly having to correct a thing, and it's quite nice being able to sit here and just talk and not type. Anyway, I guess we had better get on with the blog, which continues with the story of my holiday. So, our time at Butlins was coming to an end. However, I had some repairs to effect to the car before we left. On Thursday morning I got up to discover the wing mirror on the drivers side hanging off the car. Now I had had problems with this before it had been knocked off previously that it had been repaired effectively. We had managed to dri...

Ollie - live on stage with Katy (well the top of his head anyway). One of the undoubted highlights of our trip to Butlins was the live show of I Can Cook. Every Wednesday, Katy Ashworth comes down to Minehead for an hour long "I Can Cook - Live". The show was free but you had to queue to get tickets for it - which I did - halfway around the Skyline Pavillion, shortly after breakfast. We managed to get tickets for the morning showing, and so, just before 11am on Wednesday we entered "Reds" the large venue in which the show was being held and looked for somewhere to sit - not that easy among hundreds of adults and children. Fortunately there was an area down by the front where the kids were sitting on the floor, so Ollie and I made our way down there, and found a place on the extreme right of the stage. As it turned out this happened to be precisely the best place to go, as right where we sat down was what appeared to be a portable sink unit. More of that la...

Well, here we are, at last, the first of the much awaited holiday blogs. Just to recap, we spent 11 nights down in the West Country, 4 at Butlins in Minehead, followed by a week in a caravan in North Devon. So much to cover! Where does one start? Well in the time-honoured and linear story telling style that is chronological order. We set sail from fair Bicester in dry if somewhat cloudy conditions. But it was not long before we encountered stormy waters - quite literally. The journey was conducted in one of those strange climactic days where you could be driving through a torrential downpour one minute, before emerging into bright sunshine and ground dry as a bone, where literally it had been like a lake a mere mile earlier. Unfortunately our arrival at Butlins co-incided with one such monsoon period, leaving us no option to get soaked despite having our own personal parking space (as one gets in deluxe accomodation) just a few yards from the door we all managed to get comple...

OK, I know I should be blogging about my holiday, but as always there's other more pressing things I want to talk about. Maybe I am slightly off the wall, or not on the same wavelength as the rest of the planet but there are certain phrases that I hear oft repeated that I just don't get at all. I was watching the telly the other day and some character asked another if he fancied some "bird" (his word, not mine) and the character said "Nah, she's not my type". Now I have never understood this phrase, but as I understand it, some (if not most) men and women have a preference for certain attributes in the opposite sex, other well known phrases such as "Gentleman prefer blondes", spring to mind. There are two types of occasions on which this "not my type" expression has cropped up in my life. Either in conversation about other people (when invariably the phrase has been uttered by the person I am in conversation with) or when it h...

I may have made an error of judgement. Not often you hear that sort of admission from me, but even so... The Sirenis Seaview: Wish I was there? Let you know in a couple of weeks. I return once again to the subject of holidays. You'll remember, this is that topic that despite all my best laid plans never quite goes according to those plans. This time last year we were freshly arrived at the Sirenis Seaview hotel in Ibiza for two weeks, on an all inclusive deal which I thought was pretty decent value at the price Bet365 generously paid for it, about £1650. The hotel was lovely the weather was beautiful and the place had a most amazing entertainment team who could not do enough for the kids. Sadly, this was not enough, the food poisoning we all suffered due to being at the mercy of the "canteen" as we called it, put a real dampener on the trip. Then there was the continued horror of getting there, the aggro of getting through the airports with all the r...