Nothing to declare

I have a great idea for David Cameron for the next time someone accuses him of being a bit of a toff. Out of touch with the common people. Which should be in about half an hour, by my calculations. Here’s my idea – Cameron should book himself onto a National Express trip from London to, say Amsterdam. In roasting August weather. Early in the morning. 5am, say. That’s the kind of endurance test that will drive out any more talk of the Bullingdon Club for a while. It’s for your own good, Dave. Tough love and all that.

In fact you should all do it. Honestly, it’ll be fun. That’s what I thought, at any rate. I was tempted by the ludicrously low price, of course, and the prospect of being able to sit and read a book for an extended period without having to get up and move about at all. I am always very much in favour of that.

And it wasn’t too bad on the way to Belgium. The driver was a bit brusque, even rude, but only in an amusingly Dutch way. The bus was a bit dark and grubby and not quite how it looked on the adverts but, well, it *was* pretty damn cheap. It brought back many cheerful memories of my student days. And I even managed to read quite a bit of my book in between several tedious games of Littlest Pet Shop Top Trumps, a game that is almost impossible to lose, even when you are trying very very hard. As I frequently am.

Obviously there was the toilet to contend with. It wasn’t the worst toilet I have ever visited. Oh so many contenders for that particular accolade, but in the past I have always had the option of avoiding the fetid facilities for as long as possible. Not so on this trip, with two daughters who were a. very bored and b. very taken with the idea of going to the loo on a bus. Every. Twenty. Minutes.

Anyway it was all very jolly and friendly and comradely on the bus. Lots of chatting and sharing grapes and sitting on the pavement and breathing in a lot of second hand smoke and even sharing a flask of tea. (Obviously this was someone else’s tea. I didn’t think to bring a flask. I rather thought we might stop somewhere for a nice cup of coffee and a cake. Or a Panini. Somewhere like Starbucks, or Costa. We really really didn’t. In case you’re wondering.) Ah, I thought, this is the way to travel! A real sense of community! I am instilling in my children the ability to amuse themselves on long and tedious journeys! Well done me.

But then we hit a small snag. No seats for the return journey. Ah. Well that’s OK. Let’s go via Brussels. More extremely rude and unhelpful staff, a waiting room with half the seats ripped out and the invigorating scent of urine but, still, it’s very very cheap and we are well on the way home! More interesting people to chat to! The time is going to whizz by! Much better than the dull old airport!

But wait a minute, what’s this. Hmm. Flashing blue lights? I wonder who the French police are pulling over? Oh. It’s us. Ah.

So we are escorted off the motorway and we end up in a grim industrial estate. Lights still flashing, sirens going. As the customs officer walked up the aisle I was amused to note that we all quickly put our seatbelts on, like we had been shopped and needed blue and twos for terrible seatbelt violations.

When we started travelling BACK in the direction of Brussels, still with the blues and twos, I realised that maybe this wasn’t a faulty headlight we’d been stopped for. We ended up in dusty little French town with a lot of grumpy customs officers with big guns and, God help us, sniffer dogs.

And then we were all out on the pavement with our luggage spilling out onto the side of the road. (By this time we’re being filmed by a bald grinning guy with a huge camera with a boom and everything, so maybe we end up on the local news or, more likely, a fly on the wall docusoap – ’50 Greatest Annoyed English Tourists’ perhaps?)

And then we are all called, one at a time, into a little room for questioning. GothicDaughter is demonstrating the pointlessness of the deterrent effect very effectively – she looks terrified and extremely guilty indeed, and only an innocent eight year old can. She whispers VERY loudly, ‘What if someone put drugs in our cases on the platform when we weren’t looking!? Or sneaked into our hotel room last night when we were asleep? Are we going to go to PRISON??? Oh Daddy will miss us….’ I wonder whether I should put my hand over her mouth to encourage her to take a more relaxed attitude, because this is the kind of talk that might swiftly answer her question about why they’re wearing rubber gloves.

SparklyDaughter, in contrast, is demonstrating her usual wild disregard for authority. She says, with great emphasis, ‘I don’t know why they have *guns*, anyway. Everyone know you’re not ALLOWED to *kill* people. If they shot someone that would be VERY RUDE.’

We somehow manage to escape being arrested and we are finally sent on our way after a mere three hours delay.

Well it’s certainly something to talk about on the first day back at school. ‘What’s that picture, SparklyChild?’ ‘That’s mummy, getting sniffed by a dog looking for drugs!’

Hmm. I think next year, maybe we’ll stick to the Isle of Wight.

The dogs were cute, though.

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In Bruges (it’s in Belgium)

I know it might seem a bit of an over-reaction to avoid the smell of manure to come to Bruges – but honestly – it was quite a strong smell.

Anyway I don’t really need an excuse to come to Bruges. I first came here two years ago on a singing tour and fell pretty catastrophically in love with the place.  On that trip, we arrived in the hotel in the late afternoon. I opened the window of the quirky little room and the bells were ringing out across the city. It was magical and I was hooked.

It really is a strikingly appealing place. Lots of little cobbled streets and preserved and restored medieval buildings and dinky churches and twiddly canals. It’s adorable, like a model village. And nuns. A surprising number of nuns.

It’s the perfect place to take children too, because everything is wonderfully close together so not even Sparklydaughter, famously unable to walk down the stairs before she complains her legs are tired, was able to moan. Actually Sparklydaughter was in heaven because the streets of Bruges are paved with chocolate. It is pretty much her spiritual home; she was sniffing the air delightedly as she passed the chocolate shops (every other doorway in fact) and she could be persuaded to admire any amount of Flemish art with the promise of some of those seashell pralines at the end.

Both daughters were ludicrously excited by the diamond museum too. It turns out that diamonds really are a girl’s best friend. At the end there is a display that allows you stick your finger in a little hole and ‘try on’ some famous diamond wedding rings – Princess Di, Liz Taylor, Grace Kelly. ‘Who are these ladies, mummy? DID THEY LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER??’ Reader, I squirmed a little and smoothed over the truth of the fate of these ladies. But if you ever catch yourself looking at your own little splinter of a diamond and think – I wish I had a big stonking diamond (not that you would ever be that shallow of course) you can comfort yourself with the fact that big stonking diamonds, it turns out, don’t always lead to that fairy tale ending. Thank God we went to Elizabeth Duke.

And there’s the Belgian cuisine. Basically this consists of stew and chips, followed by waffles and beer. Who could possibly improve on that? Not the French with their endless fiddling about with sauces or the Nordics with their tendency to bury fish in the ground or the Germans with their fondness for serving up internal organs as ‘local specialities’. Chunks of meat, cooked in beer, served with potatoes fried in fat. No intestines or teeny portions in sight.

Of course the only complaint I have heard about Bruges is that it’s a bit too touristy. I honestly don’t get this one at all. I mean, I AM a tourist. So are you, sometimes, I’m willing to bet. I like a bit of exploring, sure, even a bit of adventure from time to time but I like going on holiday and on holiday I am a tourist. I want to sit in nice places and look at lovely views and buildings, whilst eating delicious food and drinking – ideally – some marvellous beer brewed by Trappist Monks. That’s what keeps me going through the long days of winter, through those endless hours trying to enthuse teenagers with the Joy of Semi-colons: the thought of drinking a ‘small’ glass of Leffe (i.e. a massive goblet) in the sunshine. The glinting cobbles, the clopping horses, the gentle whooshing sound of Euros zooming out of my purse and into the pockets of these surprisingly attractive waiters and waitresses. I don’t really want the genuine medieval experience thanks very much. If I want the smell of manure and back-breaking agricultural labour I can stay at home. I want to be charmed and Bruges can provide charm, with extra kitsch to spare. I can handle a little bit of fake. I’ve been to EuroDisney, after all.

I like the Belgian sense of style, too. That kind of kitschy-chic European quality but without the studious coolness of the French.  I like the fact that there was a poster for the film ‘In Bruges’ in the tourist office, a film jammed full of nasty violence and seedy drug-taking, during which the Colin Farrell character is incredibly rude about being stuck in Bruges: ‘Maybe that’s what hell is, an entire eternity spent in ******* Bruges.’ It’s not exactly a tourist-sponsored soft-focus portrait of the place. That’s the Belgians for you.

Anyway if you are tired of the tourist experience and want to see the ‘real’ Belgium then you could always travel to and from Bruges on a Eurolines bus. That’s definitely enough REAL life for anyone. More of this tomorrow and I warn you it involves police escorts, sniffer dogs, intrusive searching and absolutely no tea for me for about 12 hours.

I’d rather be in Bruges. (It’s in Belgium.)

 

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Pitchforks and chip forks

Today I sampled the delights of the 40th Annual Tweed, Aga and Barbour Show.

The country show! A fine institution. All the little idiosyncrasies of country life all laid bare and on display.

Having recently returned from the Real Deep Countryside of Farthest Wales, I realise that The Village is a pretty watered down version of the rural experience. Farthest Wales – now that really IS the country. A tractor shop in every other village. NO MOBILE SIGNAL AT ALL as I may have mentioned.

I became very fond of the local radio station, Radio Very Welsh Indeed. The poor presenter of Radio Very Welsh Indeed – and yes, there is only one – has to keep up his perkiness from dawn to dusk and quite possibly all night too, despite a play list that alternates Bruno Mars with Rod Stewart. At one point I swear I heard him say, with just a touch of weariness, ‘Here with you for the next SIX HOURS…’

Radio Very Welsh Indeed also took weather very seriously indeed, as befits those making their living mainly from the land and the sea and the tourists. Weather reports – which seemed to come from a toilet cubicle – were hourly and very very specific. So specific in fact that they were almost incomprehensible to a townie like me. ‘The winds will range from 4.5 to 6.8, with general smuffliness emerging later. Seas will be mainly bobbly, but perhaps bibbliness arising to the South.’

The broadcasting of Radio Very Welsh Indeed drifted erratically from Welsh to English and back again without warning, in a way I found quite soothing. Apart from the traffic report, that is, which was always in Welsh. A nice touch that, I thought – ‘We can let the English know the weather, but as for the traffic, well, let them get stuck in the horrific Welsh rural gridlock! That will make them learn Welsh! Haha!’ Obviously the flaw there being that Welsh gridlock consists of a tractor coming face to face with some disaffected sheep for about 30 seconds, before the sheep forget what they were supposed to be doing and wander off to eat grass.

The adverts, though, I found truly terrifying. A glimpse of what REAL country life is like. ‘Would you like your own sewage drainage system?’ CHRIST yes, I would. ‘Would you like your own running water supply instead of that manky old well?’ STOP asking me these questions, you’re scaring me!

So yes it’s something of a relief to be smothered in the bosom of the Tweed, Aga and Barbour Country Show, a delightful affair with many fine things on display. For this one day a year, I can feel almost part of things out here. I browse the array of outdoor clothing and contemplate buying a waxed hat, before remembering that if it rains, I tend to stay indoors. I also look with genuine interest at the livestock, trying to ignore the pleas from the daughters for the purchase of chickens. Livestock in a cage at a fair is one thing, livestock in my own garden quite another.

You can learn a great deal about the country folk by watching them at these fairs, about their priorities for example. Dogs, mainly. Dogs are their number one priority. Also, number two three and all the other numbers. By far the most popular stall at the fair today was one for what is effectively a Dog Spa, with a pool and a treadmill and a cappuccino bar. It wasn’t entirely clear whether the latter was for the dogs or the owners. I imagine that most of the owners will be leaping in the spa pool with their dogs given half a chance. Boy, do the country folk love their dogs. On every corner one was treated to the sight of owners leaning down to let their dogs slobber all over them and – true story – have a lick of their ice-cream.

I was on the receiving end of a bit of canine slobber myself as I attempted to eat some doughnuts at the side of the field. This was, it turns out, an open invitation to be broadsided by a large muscular hound. One of the hunt hounds*, as it happens, with ‘a very good sense of smell’ as the trainer laughingly informed me as I tried to remove its muzzle from various parts of me. I tried to laugh along, because if it’s one thing I learned pretty quickly since moving out here it’s this: don’t get on the wrong side of a man on a big horse.

And when we got home we spent ten minutes trying to work out where that terrible smell was coming from before we remember – oh yeah. Manure.

It must be nearly the end of the summer.

Oh what the heck, I think I’ll go to Bruges.

*Oh that’s something I learned pretty soon after moving to the country, too. You know how hunting got banned? Yeah, well, it turns out they never quite got that memo out here.

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Pretentious? Moi?

Today in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford I overheard what has to be a contender for the most pretentious remark ever uttered:

Young geeky boy in sandals – ‘So why did you break up with her?’

Second young geeky boy, in retro-geek t-shirt – ‘She wasn’t sympathetic to my creative direction.’

I was sniggering quietly to myself at the outrageousness of this remark, before being caught up short by the memory of a statement of my own, just a few weeks ago, when I said IN A PUBLIC PLACE MIND YOU, ‘I consider thinking to be one of my main hobbies.’

So, can anyone outdo either of those?

 

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Emergency Calls Only

Ah! The bliss of being back in the safety of my own wi-fi.

I know being on holiday and getting away from it all is supposed to be relaxing, but it really isn’t, not for me. I spent the whole week unable to escape the niggling feeling that THINGS were happening and I did not know about them and could not find out about them. This is not my idea of a good time.

And believe me, trying to keep up with a daily blog seems like a less than clever idea when you are standing underneath a tree trying to shelter from the driving rain, balancing the laptop on a low branch, frantically refreshing a screen that reads ‘connection timeout’. And a big thank you to those extremely patient members of my family who sat uncomplainingly in the car while I drove round the streets of Remote Welsh Coastal Town trying to find a ‘hot’-spot, and kept a serene silence while I moaned, repeatedly, ‘I swear I could get a wireless connection here yesterday!’

And although I had NO SIGNAL ALL WEEK, I couldn’t help looking at my phone every 30 seconds, just in case a bar had miraculously appeared, giving myself a persistent crick in my neck. It turns out that miracles rarely happen in Farthest Wales.

Great holiday though. Amazing beaches and beautiful scenery that I have forced the GorgeousTeen to admire all week. You should go. Just make sure you move to Orange first.

Anyway, quick catch up.

1. Wondering what happened to the leaping gorgeous blonde A level girls? They’ve have all gone to the Reading Festival to get photographed in – new cliche alert! – very short denim shorts, wellies and just enough mud to contrast with their unfeasibly long hair:

2. I appreciate this hardly counts as news, but the Reading Festival is shockingly wet and muddy. The Environment Agency have lowered the Thames by six inches in an effort to make those gorgeous girls less muddy. Some might say that holding a festival on a flood plain wasn’t the best idea ever. Who knew?

3. Things my daughters have argued about – new entry. When SparklyDaughter grows up and runs a cafe, can GothicDaughter be a waitress? No, she cannot. (Fair enough, to be honest. She would be a terrible waitress. She can’t hold a thought in her head for more than 5 seconds at a time, she can rarely be persuaded to brush her hair and her hands are frankly a health hazard.) But can she paint a mural on the wall of this putative cafe? Yes, she may, ‘as long as there are no paintings of DEAD THINGS,’ says SparklyDaughter. I’m so glad we’ve resolved this issue.

4. It turns out that my prediction was correct and girls DID do better than boys in, like, EVERY EXAM EVER despite the fact that the entire exam system has been redesigned to try and stop this happening; to quote the Telegraph, by scrapping coursework ‘which it was assumed helped improve girls’ results because they worked harder and more consistently to produce it.’ And Lord knows we wouldn’t want an exam system that rewards hard, consistent work. As I also predicted, this was all slightly galling for the girls to read and hear on results day. But the good news for TicTacGirl is – nothing tastes as good as THREE As feels….

5. I finally got to see the Emergency Dentist who told me (after two hours wait and giving me an X ray in the waiting room – surely not best practice? Perhaps they do things differently in Wales) that there was NOTHING HE COULD DO and the nerve was dying. To which my reaction was HURRY UP AND FLIPPING DIE already, bloody nerve.

Yes I do believe we are up to date.

Now just off to Google things all evening, just because I CAN.

Ha.

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