Don’t you just love the little peculiarities of holidaying? Like as soon as you bomb into the outdoor pool someone is bound to ask "How's the water?”
In my considerable experience the water is always two things; wet and cold. Even on the hottest of days, the water is cold. Admittedly there might be subtle temperature changes if said pool has been bathed in sun so hot it leaves your pink bits moist, but even so, that initial plunge is still going to be farkin cold. Still, it doesn't stop folk who never actually get in the bloody thing anyway from asking does it?
The water in the shower will be cold too, if you're silly enough to be the last of seven adults to have one each morning. A mistake you only ever make once, partly because you'll freeze your nuts of trying to soap and rinse in two minutes flat but more likely because when you tell everyone they'll laugh at you. It's at that point you realise it would probably have been easier to bomb into the pool where of course you expect the water to be cold and wet.
Holiday homes always spring a few surprises that we pampered city folk have been accustomed to. Like wildlife. Or in our case, cockroaches the size of 50 cent pieces. The old style 50 cent pieces. It's not as if this house is dirty, it’s far from that, although the previous tenants took the 'clean before you leave' rule quite liberally, if at all. No it's a flash place with all the mod cons, but somewhere, somehow, there's a small army of roaches chowing down on something because they don't get that big by sitting on the couch eating Twisties like you and I do.
One appeared out of nowhere in our en suite sink last night. I had just finished brushing my teeth, had taken a whizz and gone back to wash my hands when literally out of thin air there it was. And this was no standard roach either; this was a black Waffen SS number and it looked quite capable of running a small insect concentration camp too. It gave me a little more of a fright than usual roaches, or any insect for that matter would, simply because I couldn't fathom where the fuck it came from. One minute it wasn't there, the next it was. Perhaps it was a ninja.
If hot, humid nights in a foreign land (Gisbos) weren't already enough for me to start dreaming of Nam again, now I have Vietcong like roaches to worry about. Charlie would appear out of nowhere too. Now if three tours of Nam taught me anything it's not to fear the bush, thankfully the wife is prone to waxing hers. But we also learnt to ignore things like roaches because the jungles were full of shit like that; snakes, ants, spiders and of course, Mormons. I lost count of how many carefully planned ambushes were ruined by dudes in black suits who had pedalled their ten speeds through the bush to ask if we'd found God? I hadn't but like I always said, if we did and he was wearing black pyjamas, then the man will have to look for himself because shit would really kick off.
Gisbos, well at least our eight acres, appears to be Cicada Central on account of the millions that seem to call this place home. At night they smack themselves silly against the windows trying to get into the light. I don't know what the birds do all day around these parts but it they ain't eating the fucken cicadas, that’s for sure.
Bookcases and their contents are always an interesting place to spend some time when holidaying in someone else’s house. The one in our room has all the mandatory’s; Robert Ludlam, Bryce Courtney, cooking books, fishing magazines and the old classics that are Readers Digest mags. It also had the bonus of a condom wrapper, empty, the contents of which were hopefully discarded somewhere else other then jammed between the pages of the cookbooks somewhere inappropriate, like the white sauce recipe or the bit on how to toss your own salad. I dare not look.
The local municipality is always a good visit, at least initially, then the shops that were such a novelty the first few times just piss you off after that. You know you're in a holiday town when you notice they have shops that Granddad would spend his days driving between; The Pool & Spa shop, The second hand traders (fittingly named Mr BoJumbles), the mower repair shop and old school menswear stores. The kind that sell hankies in a box.
We used to sell hankies in a box in my first ever job at Hallensteins, Our best sellers back than were short sleeve business shirts, walk shorts and walk socks. We sold boxed hanks to the like of DougalMacs mum, who bought him home a new box of eight each week. To this day he hasn't opened them all in the hope they will be a collectable one day. He keeps them all in his Collectatorium at home, which is right next to the masterbatorium, which is right next to the kitchen. Where he keeps the Twisties.
In Gisbos the council makes money from parking meters, but only the out of townies actually pay for parking. All the locals simply park up and walk away. We do see a parkie every now and then, but she is more inclined to give cars the chalk, the international symbol of 'half an hour more', not tickets. That would never happen in Welly. But that's a holiday town for you, sometimes you'd swear that there's some ongoing joke that the locals get and you don't. Like paying for parking.
Oh and we have a pig running wild out there somewhere. Not your cute, little pink number that you can never see yourself eating, but some humongus, fuck off black Hound of the Baskervilles beast that like the roaches is certainly attracted to this place by something.
Quite possibly the father-in-laws snoring at night...
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