Hello and sorry it’s been a few weeks. Truth be told (would you expect anything less?) I’ve been on holiday…. in Antigua. In the Caribbean. Needless to mention it was absolutely stunning. I have some incredible pictures and, although I began to upload a snap I took, I find WordPress isn’t particularly user friendly in this regard and the picture came out looking completely stupid. I will attempt to upload them again when I have more patience… if you want me to. I say that because I know what its like to be on the receiving end of a barrage of holiday pictures/video’s/anecdotes and never before has the phrase “You just had to be there” been more fitting. So, I’m flexible, let me know- I’ll understand your polite silence as “Don’t bother” and I’ll refrain from throwing myself into a technological struggle with WordPress to post them (as you can see I won’t particularly be offended either way).
Anyway, on with the blog. There are a couple of things I wanted to write about. One actually was my holiday, in a manner of speaking, although it might not be what you expect. Instead of droning on about the beach, the sand, the pool, the food, the people, the cocktails (which were all lovely) I simply wanted to share a few of the funny little things that I experienced while I was there. I ultimately decided to keep a little log of what happened on the holiday, purely via writing little notes on my mobile phone, so it was just a couple of funny things I noted during the two weeks we were there. I hope you find these amusing/interesting otherwise it’ll definitely fall into the aforementioned “You just had to be there” category and I’ll want to kick myself, which is anatomically awkward at the best of times. I really want to avoid that if I can.
First of all I have to tell you that they have wild dogs in Antigua. Wild. Dogs. As a child I’d think that was incredibly cool and endeavour to lead a gang of wild dogs and have adventures, but when you have children yourself the notion of wild dogs is a little alarming to say the least. Thankfully we only saw one wild dog and from her large black teats (for more detail imagine half-chewed liquorice), I guess she had puppies somewhere. I did find this quite sad though, but probably from a restrained English sense of not wanting to interfere I didn’t do anything. What could I do anyway?
Next odd little occurrence was the first time we went onto the (ridiculously pristine) beach. On entering the water for the first time (warm, clear, refreshing, beautiful) we were warned by a large, topless American man (imagine the colour of Cuprinol woodstain) that there was a huge jellyfish about, but he was going to get a stick and fish it out. He never did fetch a stick or fish out a giant jellyfish and in the end he just wandered off. What I thought was strange was that he waited until we were all in waist deep before he told us about it. The only suitable way to reply to that has to be “Yes, it’s wrapped around my leg right now” before screaming loudly at him.
My next experience is a little conversation I had with my 4 year old step-daughter. We were all in the pool and she decided she needed the toilet. It was my turn to take her which meant going to the Gents toilets, rather than the Ladies. “The boys one is rubbish” she said “The girls one is much nicer”, but regardless she went into a cubicle and slammed the door accidentally. After a few seconds I asked he if she needed some tissue (it’s hard to reach from the seat when you are 4) but wonderfully she replied “No, I’m wet already”. I love the ruthless logic of children, and the occasional ignorance of hygiene is really sweet… but in all honesty, it’s hard to argue against.
A further story I want to tell is about the night we saw ‘Mr Moves’, the fire-eater. Like a shop that mends shoes as well as cutting keys, this fellow could also limbo dance. We were sat in complete awe actually as he ate fire, then limbo danced, then ate some more fire, then limbo danced (even lower than before) and so on and so forth, for quite a while. He then began limbo dancing very close to some fire, to the point I feared his MC Hammer pantaloons would catch light and end the show. This fortunately didn’t happen (though I hear the hospital on the island of Antigua is the best in the Caribbean, so he would have been in good hands), and everyone was thoroughly entertained. I asked my step-daughter (the 4 year old one, I have a 10 year old one as well and I’m sure she will feature at some point in my blogs so please be patient), what she thought of ‘Mr Moves’ fire-eating as she had sat in stunned silence for the whole show. “It’s dangerous” she replied (to my relief actually, Mr Moves act could have undone a great deal of household safety advice pertaining to the danger of fire to young children) and “and its rubbish” (I was almost proud, Mr Moves foiled) but then she immediately followed this with “I will do that when I am bigger”. Shit.
Thanks for reading, that’ll do for now. I promise that the next blog will sooner rather than later.
Listening to:
Jamiroquai – Corner of The Earth
Reading:
Webstuff:
https://destroytwitter.com/ Fantastic Twitter client that looks cool.
http://www.befunky.com/photoApps.php# Great online application for editing pictures with effects. Really simple and easy to use.
http://bumptop.com/ Make your desktop 3D, its brilliant, original and you’ll never want to go back to your usual desktop.
