Holidays

I found a lovely blog recently, called Alexander Residence.  The author, Penny, is running a linky about memories, storing up memories of her childhood for her own children to treasure.  Each month has a theme, and the theme for July is 'Holidays'.  I have so many good memories of so many good holidays, I wasn't sure where to start, so I'm going to follow Penny's lead and do a list of things I remember from holidays past.

A few times when my brother and I were little, we stayed on a farm somewhere in Cornwall.  I have idyllic memories of these holidays and I'm sure the sun shone every single day!
- The farm had a resident goose called 'Hissing Sid'.  He was a real hisser.
- We had a full English breakfast every morning, with proper fried bread.  It was heaven, and their labrador thought so too - he used to lick the door of the dishwasher when it had been loaded to get all the juicy bits of egg yolk and bacon fat that had dripped down!
- I was also bitten by a duck.  I was telling it off for fighting with the other ducks over the bread I was feeding them.  Well, I was 6!
- One night I left my recorder on the floor of the farmhouse landing.  When I picked it up the next morning to play it, a beetle crawled out of the recorder and into my mouth.  I never, ever left my recorder on the floor again.
- One year my mum took some leftover roast lamb when we went down to stay at the farm.  We had lamb sandwiches on the beach for about a week!
- We drank coke from real glass bottles on the beach, and mum and dad had a Feast nearly every day!


As we got older we started to go abroad on holiday.  I remember:
- The watermelon man on the beach at Dubrovnik.
- My brother losing his Hello Colour bear on the coach from the airport to the hotel - he's still traumatised to this day...

With my mum and my brother, in Yugoslavia.

- Going on a boat trip to an island in Yugoslavia and eating barbecued mackerel.  It was divine, but I was sea sick on the way back, even throwing up into the sea when we docked.  There were actual people swimming in the sea around the boat...  Oops...
- Rum and Raisin ice cream in a hotel restaurant, I can't remember where now.
- Being really seasick on an overnight ferry crossing to France, then being made to eat a croissant just before we docked.  I couldn't eat croissants for years after that...
- My dad getting decidedly wound up watching England play West Germany in the 1990 World Cup, at a Haven caravan site in France.
- Winning a lilo race in the hotel swimming pool in Malta.  My prize was a Knickerbocker Glory in the restaurant - I didn't even know what it was until then!
- A freezing hotel pool in Austria, which my brother could hardly bare to get into, it was so cold.
- Eating ham and eggs at the top of a mountain, also in Austria, and a big dog (I think it was an Alsatian) deciding to walk between my brother's legs and get stuck...
- Eating Moules Frites in Nice.  Yum!
- A gala dinner in Italy where they paraded all the desserts around the restaurant.  And my brother shouting 'ole!' really loudly, just as everyone else had gone quiet.
- Fancying the pants off an Italian waiter, when I was about 14.  Until I saw him standing outside the hotel, picking his nose.
- Riding in my Great Uncle's huge Cadillac in Canada (well sort of, he is my Gran's cousin's husband and they emigrated in the 50s).  One day my mum announced that she loved sitting in the back on a hot day with the windows down because it gave her 'a lovely blow job'.

There are so many memories I have, I could write so much more!  Holidays are such precious family time and I have realised this all the more since our first holiday as a little family in June.  Just to spend two weeks together was bliss, and we created lots of new memories for us and the children.