[This is actually the blog for Monday the 7th May – practicalities of technology made accurate posting impossible.]
My snobbery level is now reaching critical mass.
Travelling with my fellow citizens from Bristol to Las Palmas tested my love of humanity (in the abstract) by forcing my attitude to be tested by practicalities of sitting behind a be-ringed, metallic yellow haired, stick thin, flesh showing laced leather trousers wearing seat lowerer. In a Thomson plane (aka ‘Sardine Travel’) the correct approach to transportation in the airborne cattle trucks is never (NEVER) recline your seat.
The lack of space for the passenger behind you in the upright seat position means that any deviation from the vertical delivers swift physical pain on important extremities of the unfortunate traveller behind you. The bleached bitch in front of me ignored this basic precept of international travel and attempted to deviate from the upright. She reckoned without my stalwart knees, which, in spite of severe punishment restrained her deviational activity and hopefully ruined her expected expansive pleasure based on the misery of the Forgotten One behind her.
I dwell on length on this ageing (no ageism implied) brazen bully because she was a representative of the folk travelling to Las Palmas. The bejewelled, ¾ length trouser wearing brigade (just that bit too old to get away with their clothing) were out in force and, instead of lurking in the shadows and shunning the gaze of reputable humans, they confronted respectability with their shrieking encomiums to drink. The female of the species, with the sort of smooth, flawless complexion which is not achieved without industrial depths of concrete like make up and cantilevered eyelashes which defy all known laws of physics, behaved with the vulgar abandon usually confined to the more ruthless gangs of hen party terrorists.
In spite of having been given numbered seats for the flight, as soon as the departure gate was announced the vulgar herd jumped to the gate like the French and waited in line to wait to board a but to wait to depart to wait to enter the plane to wait to get to their seats to wait for departure.
Were one a politician, then looking at experienced travellers acting like brainless lemmings might encourage policies which predicated a complete lack of belief in the intelligence of the electorate. Wait a minute, now hat I look aback over the last ten years I do believe that I can see something which . . . let it pass, let it pass!
As this was a flight to Las Palmas it would not have been complete without its quota of queens. There they were, pastiches of stereotypes with their skin tight tee shirts, plane enveloping attitudes and a playful disregard to the boringly straight rules of in-board behaviour.
Add to this melange of chav and queen a sprinkling of school age kids extracted from their schools to join their squalling baby siblings for a cheap family holiday and you have the ingredients for three and a half hours of simmering hell.
It was, therefore, no surprise that although we had an entire small coach to take us to the hotel the requested repast in our room after our epic flight was not there.
There is, however, a real advantage to having a hotel room next to the Yumbo Centre: food at all hours! We ventured out past fornicating couples to find a perfectly acceptable café inhabited only by two policemen with charmingly camp companions which served much needed sustenance to we weary travellers.
We did not get to bed much before five am but we were up with the (latish) larks to get down to the beach.
Kiosco siete seems to have migrated nearer to the lighthouse, which is a good thing, but my feet still hurt from the amount of walking that we have done today.
The weather is glorious, but the water glacial. It is my personal belief that the Gulf Stream has indeed stopped or reversed itself. I was forcibly reminded of a youthful holiday when, on a blazingly hot August day I flung myself into Lake Windermere and had the exhilarating (if life threatening) experience of having all the air punched out of your body by the sheer inhumanly impossible coldness of British water. If the water does not warm up by a factor of ten, then Toni is not going near the H2O for the rest of the holiday!
First reaction to the buffet in the hotel is positive, which is more than can be said for the sub standard of the furnishing of the rooms. However, far be it from me to be impetuous in my judgements! Let bile simmer and mature so that the killing blow is all the more gruesomely fatal!
It’s not much of a philosophy, but it works for me!
[This is the actual point at which the blog for Tuesday 8th May actually starts – blame the hotel for not having a hot spot.]
Service is restored! To all my unique reader I say do not loose faith when all it takes is vast sums of money to compensate for the cheap hotel’s lack of a ‘hot spot’ to find an entry to the internet.
I am, as you know, the last person in the world to resent having to lay out more than a fortnight’s largess when a Jobseeker just to stay in touch!
However the money is nothing when compared with the unending delight of being close to all of human knowledge via the net.
For example, when cooking on the beach this afternoon and reading with increasing disbelief ‘Lolita’ by Vladimir Nabokov, I was searching for the apposite word to describe Nabokov’s style and could only come up with the phrase ‘jewel like’ when I knew that there was a single word which I should have been thinking of. Kiosco Siete on Maspalomas beach has what one might refer to as distractions, but thank god for myopia which renders all surroundings pastel blurs and only the printed page remains in focus when in close proximity to the eyes. I was therefore able to concentrate with some intensity and muse, as the word did not ‘come’ on the difficulties ahead of me when trying to form a vocabulary in Spanish!
I tried the old trick of explaining my predicament to Toni in an attempt to force my memory to come up with the appropriate word. All that achieved was an ‘old fashioned’ look from the aforesaid person and no word emerging from the neurons in the grey matter.
Reading recommenced and the irritation of not remembering the bloody word highlighted each sentence and my irritation increased with the frustration of fading memory. So I gave up. And, by magic, the word ‘lapidary’ sprang, as ‘twere unbidden to my mind. And I think that means ‘jewel like’ and if it doesn’t then there is no hope for my learning another language if I can’t bring to mind such quotidian words as ‘lapidary.’
Anyway to the hotel is hand.
The Neptuno is supposed to be a four star hotel. The room is barely acceptable with air conditioning but no facilities for making tea and coffee! The balcony does look out over the pool but tangentially and we have a much better view of passers by in the Yumbo Centre staring at the loonies who would willingly patronise a hotel with such a view!
The food is good. The breakfast fare predictable but plentiful with the tea undrinkable. The selection of flavoured teas is inexplicably wide until you notice the vast number of Germans partaking of the unpalatable liquid horror that constitutes that heavenly beverage known as tea. I have yet to partake of a ‘commercial’ cup of tea worthy of the name. There is a certain about of missionary work to be done when I arrive!
I think it fair to leave a final judgement on the hotel until the end of the holiday.
Though I can feel my mind closing, even as I type.
My snobbery level is now reaching critical mass.Travelling with my fellow citizens from Bristol to Las Palmas tested my love of humanity (in the abstract) by forcing my attitude to be tested by practicalities of sitting behind a be-ringed, metallic yellow haired, stick thin, flesh showing laced leather trousers wearing seat lowerer. In a Thomson plane (aka ‘Sardine Travel’) the correct approach to transportation in the airborne cattle trucks is never (NEVER) recline your seat.
The lack of space for the passenger behind you in the upright seat position means that any deviation from the vertical delivers swift physical pain on important extremities of the unfortunate traveller behind you. The bleached bitch in front of me ignored this basic precept of international travel and attempted to deviate from the upright. She reckoned without my stalwart knees, which, in spite of severe punishment restrained her deviational activity and hopefully ruined her expected expansive pleasure based on the misery of the Forgotten One behind her.
I dwell on length on this ageing (no ageism implied) brazen bully because she was a representative of the folk travelling to Las Palmas. The bejewelled, ¾ length trouser wearing brigade (just that bit too old to get away with their clothing) were out in force and, instead of lurking in the shadows and shunning the gaze of reputable humans, they confronted respectability with their shrieking encomiums to drink. The female of the species, with the sort of smooth, flawless complexion which is not achieved without industrial depths of concrete like make up and cantilevered eyelashes which defy all known laws of physics, behaved with the vulgar abandon usually confined to the more ruthless gangs of hen party terrorists.
In spite of having been given numbered seats for the flight, as soon as the departure gate was announced the vulgar herd jumped to the gate like the French and waited in line to wait to board a but to wait to depart to wait to enter the plane to wait to get to their seats to wait for departure.
Were one a politician, then looking at experienced travellers acting like brainless lemmings might encourage policies which predicated a complete lack of belief in the intelligence of the electorate. Wait a minute, now hat I look aback over the last ten years I do believe that I can see something which . . . let it pass, let it pass!
As this was a flight to Las Palmas it would not have been complete without its quota of queens. There they were, pastiches of stereotypes with their skin tight tee shirts, plane enveloping attitudes and a playful disregard to the boringly straight rules of in-board behaviour.
Add to this melange of chav and queen a sprinkling of school age kids extracted from their schools to join their squalling baby siblings for a cheap family holiday and you have the ingredients for three and a half hours of simmering hell.
It was, therefore, no surprise that although we had an entire small coach to take us to the hotel the requested repast in our room after our epic flight was not there.
There is, however, a real advantage to having a hotel room next to the Yumbo Centre: food at all hours! We ventured out past fornicating couples to find a perfectly acceptable café inhabited only by two policemen with charmingly camp companions which served much needed sustenance to we weary travellers.
We did not get to bed much before five am but we were up with the (latish) larks to get down to the beach.
Kiosco siete seems to have migrated nearer to the lighthouse, which is a good thing, but my feet still hurt from the amount of walking that we have done today.
The weather is glorious, but the water glacial. It is my personal belief that the Gulf Stream has indeed stopped or reversed itself. I was forcibly reminded of a youthful holiday when, on a blazingly hot August day I flung myself into Lake Windermere and had the exhilarating (if life threatening) experience of having all the air punched out of your body by the sheer inhumanly impossible coldness of British water. If the water does not warm up by a factor of ten, then Toni is not going near the H2O for the rest of the holiday!
First reaction to the buffet in the hotel is positive, which is more than can be said for the sub standard of the furnishing of the rooms. However, far be it from me to be impetuous in my judgements! Let bile simmer and mature so that the killing blow is all the more gruesomely fatal!
It’s not much of a philosophy, but it works for me!
[This is the actual point at which the blog for Tuesday 8th May actually starts – blame the hotel for not having a hot spot.]
Service is restored! To all my unique reader I say do not loose faith when all it takes is vast sums of money to compensate for the cheap hotel’s lack of a ‘hot spot’ to find an entry to the internet.I am, as you know, the last person in the world to resent having to lay out more than a fortnight’s largess when a Jobseeker just to stay in touch!
However the money is nothing when compared with the unending delight of being close to all of human knowledge via the net.
For example, when cooking on the beach this afternoon and reading with increasing disbelief ‘Lolita’ by Vladimir Nabokov, I was searching for the apposite word to describe Nabokov’s style and could only come up with the phrase ‘jewel like’ when I knew that there was a single word which I should have been thinking of. Kiosco Siete on Maspalomas beach has what one might refer to as distractions, but thank god for myopia which renders all surroundings pastel blurs and only the printed page remains in focus when in close proximity to the eyes. I was therefore able to concentrate with some intensity and muse, as the word did not ‘come’ on the difficulties ahead of me when trying to form a vocabulary in Spanish!
I tried the old trick of explaining my predicament to Toni in an attempt to force my memory to come up with the appropriate word. All that achieved was an ‘old fashioned’ look from the aforesaid person and no word emerging from the neurons in the grey matter.
Reading recommenced and the irritation of not remembering the bloody word highlighted each sentence and my irritation increased with the frustration of fading memory. So I gave up. And, by magic, the word ‘lapidary’ sprang, as ‘twere unbidden to my mind. And I think that means ‘jewel like’ and if it doesn’t then there is no hope for my learning another language if I can’t bring to mind such quotidian words as ‘lapidary.’
Anyway to the hotel is hand.
The Neptuno is supposed to be a four star hotel. The room is barely acceptable with air conditioning but no facilities for making tea and coffee! The balcony does look out over the pool but tangentially and we have a much better view of passers by in the Yumbo Centre staring at the loonies who would willingly patronise a hotel with such a view!
The food is good. The breakfast fare predictable but plentiful with the tea undrinkable. The selection of flavoured teas is inexplicably wide until you notice the vast number of Germans partaking of the unpalatable liquid horror that constitutes that heavenly beverage known as tea. I have yet to partake of a ‘commercial’ cup of tea worthy of the name. There is a certain about of missionary work to be done when I arrive!
I think it fair to leave a final judgement on the hotel until the end of the holiday.
Though I can feel my mind closing, even as I type.
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