En Agua Caliente

Every day I have a kiddie yogurt. On the inside of the lid of the bright pink mini-pot is a series of pictures called "Las Profesiones De Danonino".
We are led to assume that Danonino is a cartoon caricature of a duck, although in some images he has a distinctly tortoise-like appearance. Each one of the profesiones comes with a big capital letter, the job title and the duck in question performing some work-related task.
We have had Astronauta, Dentista, Chofer and Yogurtera, and I hope to own the whole collection one day.
Today I actually managed to get to a Maxi-Club on time. Amazingly, the named activity was an excursion to Cala Mondrago beach to play games, a location it took us a mere 6 hours to reach yesterday on the boat without end, and that was with me driving.
While waiting, we were overcome by noxious fumes - it was septic tank emptying day. The combined effluvium of several hundred Germans was not fun. We walked through the Mondrago National Park down the same track the horses use (leaving little clues piled up) and I made sandcastles in the same place I made them yesterday.
When I got back, Jof was doing Aquarobics where a thin blonde jumped up and down poolside while lots of (mostly) women tried to copy them in the water. I joined in with gusto and laughter but Bud didn't.
Afternoon Maxi-Club was a complicated game where you slide counters over targets like shove Ha'Penny only bigger and with forfeits. Guess what, old Muggins had to jump into the pool fully clothed 4 times!
But while I was doing that, the olds walked to Cala Mondrago beach to talk about Nanna and found a new swimming pool with 2 levels in a bit of hotel we didn't know was there. I shall have to invade it.
I came second in the Shove Giant Counter game so I shall get a medal from Stella and Starky the enormous animated bits of badly cut mango! Plus I met Little Carrot. After ice cream we had a 3-way waterfight and it rained.
The wind was strong and blew lots of Bougainvillea flowers into the pools and made us cold. At supper I had all of the seafood items: Bud says that makes me a prawn star. The man outside didn't give me a free sample of Daiquiri.
The chap hosing the floor poolside said I couldn't pile up the sun loungers to make a viewing platform so I guarded the quadrant at the top of the steps stage left and we sourced some normal chairs instead.
I jumped on Jof when she was sitting down and her chair fatally ruptured so we snaffled another. Eventually the kiddie show finished and I was awarded my real actual metal medal with blue ribbon and a signed certificate, what more could you ask for.
The evening entertainment was funny with many songs and film references and the big Polish bloke had to wear false boobies a lot and the very Spanish Fredericos Mercurios had to stand right in our corner and knocked the wine over.
In the last couple of days we have investigated the local environment. One thing is missing - animals. Not including the abundant and arrogant Aryans, we see sparrows and pigeons and the odd seagull but no rats, foxes, badgers, snakes, lizards or Jof's favourite, the skeletally thin ever-hopeful Hotel Stray Cat.
Best I can offer is lots of flies and ants and that centipede I found on my bath sponge.

It's not all Beer for Breakfast around here, you know

Today we had one simple plan: do the 2 hour boat trip in the morning and put me into the 'Maxi-Club' for the multi-sporting session in the afternoon.
So we filled up on breakfast (I had salami, carrots and the usual fry-up) and got our 52 euros ready for the boat. I watched something called Magnum PI which was dreadfully corny but very funny. I also saw the A-Team dubbed into Spanish which simply does not do it Buford T Justice.
In good time we got to the headland where the boat stops. The 'Starfish' glass-bottomed catamaran was due to land at 1030 so we got there early and Jof waited by some Germans while us boys jumped rocks.
We discovered a whole new sea cave and saw the water-taxi arrive. We boarded by the gangplank shifting treacherously in the ocean swell and noted cheerfully that ex-premiership footballer Mr Robbie Savage has found a second happy career as boatman, plying the coasts of Mallorca.
It chuntered round 1 headland (a journey we could have walked in 11 minutes) and stopped at Cala Mondrago which is a double-headed inlet in a nature reserve. It has 2 decent beaches and the ship moored up in the middle and the waterslides were put down!
It's got 2 fixed ones at the back and a big inflatable one at the front. The queue for the blow-up one was way too long so we did the small ones a few times and then did some snorkelling. We went under the boat (it's a catamaran, remember) and saw the viewing windows.
In fact, we could see right through the inner and outer windows of the viewing room to the legs of the swimmers coming back from the inflatable slide on the outside of the boat. Then we snorkelled through a sea-tunnel which came out the other side of the promontory.
But the boat hooted its intention to depart so I got a tow from Bud and we got our stuff and disembarked, Mr Robbie Savage telling us to be ready at the mooring point at 1420.
This gave us a good couple of unexpected hours on the wide sandy beach so we snorkelled once more and made sandcastles and marvelled at the forgetful sunbathers without their costumes and had ham and cheese baguettes at the beach bar and got to the boat dead on time.
Only it didn't go back to our hotel. It accidentally went west to attractive traditional fishing village Cala Figuera. Oh well, we said, we'll get off when it goes back again. And indeed, it dropped anchor right outside our hotel inlet for another swimming session and I got to go down the inflatable slide because so many people had got off and the queue was negligible.
But then Oh No It Didn't do what we expected, and steamed right past our hotel at its top speed of 10 knots and went bleedin' miles to Cala Esmerelda which was not in our planned itinerary.
Then it hopped gradually back through every little cove and hotel complex (including Es Forti with its bijou fort that Henry the 8th would have laughed at, each time doing the same little patter "Cala Gran, choo choo, Cala Egos, choo choo, Porto Petro, choo choo", hootling vigorously to get the numerous snorkelers and rubber ring merchants out of the way of the landing stage) and then I asked nicely and I got to drive the boat home.
We trundled right past some very interesting-looking sea caves, more on these later.
"Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, welcome on board the Starfish Enterprise which will be stopping at 17 locations you've never heard of. Your driver today will be Mungleton!"
We got back at about 430 (6 hours on the boat) which put paid to afternoon Maxi-Club. I had so much sand in my pants I got a scratchy rash (just call me Tenderloin) and had to be severely creamed and lie in a cool dark room while Jof went to eat cake, sounds like so many college experiences yet to come.
I watched 'Kojak' but didn't understand it so did some more water-shooting until supper. During my shower I noticed that when I closed my eyes, my brain thought it was still rocking and rolling back on the pleasureboat. Incidentally, there was a centipede on my sponge: we put it out the window.
For supper I tried out octopus and cuttlefish, won't be doing that again. Some German children had stolen (nicht stollen) our idea of piling up deckchairs on the upper terrace to watch the entertainment so we took the next spot along.
Once the dancing carrots (swedes?) had done the conga and given out the prizes, the Ents team had a night off as Raulo the Rent-a-Magician did the whole show himself with minimal help from his pliable personal assistant.
I liked the way he put 3 swords through the box that she was in, without once stabbing her in the box, er. Then when Jof had gone I insisted on doing the advertised disco.
It was quite dark with multi-coloured spotlights: there was me and 3 dusky senoritas of about 4 years of age, all trying to get through the curtain at the back of the stage.
So randomly we went for a moonlit stroll to the Maxi-Club, bedtime Wednesday.

Never mind the Balearics

So Jof asked me to look online to see what travel adaptor we needed to power her hairdryer etc. This was the top advert supplied by online retailer Amazon, and, as an 8 year-old boy, it really has what I'm looking for in a travel adaptor.

You get sex toys? I must have the wrong kind of toys. Maybe it's some kind of build-your-own-girlfriend Lego set. Why has nobody told me about this?
Anyway. Following a fried breakfast I tried out the local jam but didn't like the way the French bread kept rolling back up.
Then we re-invented the classic game of: Player 1 (in pool) throws Eleanor Rugby ball to Player 2 (on the side of the pool) who leaps athletically through the air to both catch the ball AND land on the lilo. We took turns to do this with varying degrees of success until the lifeguard told us off.
Walking to the dive centre for 1230 as directed, we were told by the German sub-aqua operatives that the free session was for the over-12s only and the session for little guys like me would be 34 Euros, thank you.
I did a whole bunch more handstands in the top Egyptian pool to compensate. Later we returned to the Prussian PADI instructors. The nice leader-man looked like the chap that came back from the dead at the end of Die Hard and he showed me all the kit and fitted me for a mask etc.
The only other kids in 'Bubblemakers' were 3 Germans but I didn't mind, I never speak to people my own age anyway. We trooped off to the lock-up under the restaurant and we all got dressed as Frogmen. Hans had to carry my airtank.
We entered the long swimming pool to the annoyance of some northern parents and played underwater Frisbee and pootled up and down very successfully doing hand signals etc.
Then right at the end I started hyperventilating and had a panic attack which warranted an emergency ascent (from a depth of 3 feet).
I calmed down with Jof and sadly forfeited my chance to descend to 3 metres in the sea. The dive instructor said continue snorkelling and try again in a couple of years.
Jof bought me a blow-up dinghy and a third watergun and we messed about in pools various. We're getting the hang of supper and tonight it was salmon. OK, 173 other things besides, but the salmon-oil-salt was top of the list.
During each holiday, one must sample and purchase a bottle of the local speciality drink. In Sicily it was 'Fuoco dell'Etna' and 'Fuoco Dell'Vulcano', 2 red spirits of unreasonable alcoholic percentage, 50-70%. The Mallorcan one is 'Tunel' (from which no doubt you get Tunel vision): we shall buy some in the shop for the PiddleDaddies. It is green and aniseedy.
I had so much pasta and chips I couldn't fit in any pudding apart from where Jof got watermelon and ice cream chocolate cake and I stole it from her.
Jof had the rather good idea of re-stacking the deckchairs from where pool-cleaning man had spread them out and making ourselves a 7-foot sofa right on the terrace facing the stage.
I sat in my traditional centre-stage position  and watched 'Legends' which was the same 4 dancers doing Presley, Monroe, James Brown, Queen, Guns'n'Roses, Tina Turner, Michael Jackson, Beatles and others in a brightly coloured extravaganza and then I sat with the old people in their balcony position with the much better view.
When it was all over we noticed that some beach recliners/sunbeds already had towels on, 4 in a line, all Teutonic. We moved them all, some further along, some down to the lower level. I mean, they were reserving them for a day that hadn't even started.
We saw the super-moon (not a frisky Fraulein with exposed bottie but our one natural satellite) but it was a bit cloudy. Bed 1130.

Mamading in Majorca

I really didn't want to wake up this morning but the stampede of Germans wielding beach towels going past my window was persistent.
At breakfast we found an unknown pastry item but I had 2 fry-ups anyway. There is a tradition in this family going back decades where we purchase a mask and snorkel every holiday. This is because by the time the next holiday comes around (approx. every 6 years) the previous one has either been left in Sicily, lost, moved house, or is so old the rubber has perished.
Thus we visited the official shops of tat which were excellent.
All manner of tourist rubbish is available (and we will buy a lot of it) but also seeds of Bhut Jolokia super-chili, palms, cycads and cannabis.
And seashells, fridge magnets, water guns, lighters, local hooch and belts. So we got 2 mask/snorkel sets, a belt, a hat to replace the one that Bud lost on the first day, and we promised to return.
Exploring the rest of the hotel complex, we found the kids club, diving club, many tennis courts, playground, another swimming pool, and an excellent sea view over the cliffs. Jof walked the sensible route home due to flip-flops but I climbed down the cliffs and found some sea caves and prickly rocks and special sunbathing area and the landing stage for the Starfish glass-bottomed cruising boat.
Clearly we had to try the masks so spent 2 hours practising in the pool. After lunch we all walked to the sea and got Jof in the water.


Ole! He has found an 'ole

She didn't like the seaweed so we only threw a bit of it at her. 



Once she'd gone back we started Schneurkling and saw lots of fish of many sizes and we found the seagrass beds where the tons of seaweed that clog the beach are produced and we found hermit crabs and went in a sea cave and went out nearly as far as the headland where the water was 30 feet deep.
It was awesome, of course, and I didn't want to go back ever. We found Jof and she'd bought a second water gun and a yellow lilo and a gaily coloured rugby ball which we have named Eleanor Rugby so we played extensively in the Egyptian pool and splashed people on the sun loungers.
A diminutive Deutschlander joined in so we shot him as well and for afternoon tea I had the unknown pastry-type delicacy which was extruded dough fried in olive oil. After yet another 5 hours in the water I played with the nob in the shower, as you do.
For supper I reneged on my promise to try new foods and had pasta and chips. The 4 harem girls finished their tableau just as I got there and we had a game of Top Trumps (armoured vehicles) on the terrace.
One of the military transport vehicles is called the Mungo. While the olds were enjoying the red wine on tap, I went to the very front of the stage and watched the performance transfixed.

I didn't dance along like all the other kids but took it all in. At one point they shoved the microphone in my face and I shouted out Ole! like everyone else so they wouldn't suspect I was an alien sent to this planet to study its weaknesses in preparation for the invasion.
Bed 11pm.

The Embraer E195 Jet Plane

My light went on at 0430. I couldn't believe it, but I leapt up and had my food and we left home in the dark. The motorway was empty and we parked in the faraway long-term car park at Southampton international Mega-hub and Spaceport.
We could see several propeller planes lined up on the cut-price tarmac waiting to fly to exotic destinations such as Jersey, Malaga and Leeds. The nice lady weighed our suitcases for us and we spent £18 on coffee and sandwiches and we watched some planes take off.
We had to open and ditch our bottles of water and fill them right back up again the other side of the X-ray machine. Eventually our gate was called and I swapped seats to be with Bud and we strapped ourselves in and took off!
It was epic and we could see the cricket ground and the Spinnaker Tower and Stokes Bay splashpark and our house and my ears didn't pop at all and we could see container ships and another plane 1000 feet above us and we raced each other over France way above the clouds. I enjoyed being a High Planes Drifter, aha.
I was quite bored by the landing but enjoyed getting to the luggage carousel before they'd started moving. Also I checked out the cockpit, the captain said it was like flying an X-Box. Our mini-bus transfer was slow and hot through the parched hinterland of orange rock and desiccated red earth.
We could see pines and olive orchards and prickly pear and palms. Finally we made it to tourist heaven and our hotel near the bottom corner of the island. Jof had to wait 30 angry minutes to check us in while a wizened Spaniard tried to sell Wi-Fi to a Scottish cretin.
She got even angrier when the room was small and I had to sleep on the sofa but they said tough poo, or pay £220 for an upgrade. We had much-required food from the buffet and got changed in our 1-bed cupboard for a swim.
There are 8 pools so we ignored the baby one and did some hard work in the one nearest our hovel. Then we abandoned Jof to her Stephen Fry novel and checked out the 2 long pools shaped like the Egyptian symbol for water.
We met the scuba divers practising in the pool and Bud got told off for doing chin-ups on the wooden bridge and we worked our way from one end to the other and back again. Then we tried the sea which has a tiny sandy bit full of seaweed and some rocks which were a challenge to stand on while being buffeted by waves.
We want to do the boat trip and do snorkelling. I took Jof to the 2 long pools and she bought me a watergun and I got into a watergun battle with some Germans. A lot of people here are called Rutger and Lotti.
Directions for shower: Pull big nob towards you, temperature is wildly variable and not related to the angle of your nob. The showerhead holder wilts so the shower points back down at the pipes that supply it so you end up standing too close and pushing the big nob back in again with your bum. Pull big nob towards you again. Repeat. The shower is OK but you have to play with your nob a lot.
Supper was an even more showy display of fine cuisine than lunch. OK, there was pizza, chips, crinkle-cut carrots and many other simple sops to the English palate but there were also mussels, paella, salted fish and sea samphire.
I pigged out and I think Jof's diet is out the window with that many sheep's cheeses on offer.
The evening entertainment was ebullient, nay, incandescent with 2 giant animated carrots (who may have been bananas) who led all the little kids in a conga line and gave them medals, not sure why. Some Germans on skateboards insisted that we took their picture even though there was no chance they'd ever see it.
Then all the fun stopped and my feet were tired. Jof wouldn't let me sleep on my own so the night was finished for her, particularly as the sound stage is right across the ravine from our block and the TV is in my bedroom (the sofa).
So while I was asleep and Jof was reading, the hotel entertainment division sang an ABBA medley of unprecedented proportions. The set changed a lot and the brightly dressed performers sang very well and one chap had impressively pneumatic boobies (during 'Dancing Queen', he tripped up over his own plastic boobs, causing much surreal merriment). Perhaps this is an integral part of the all-inclusive family package holiday that I have missed out on, but it's only day 1. Quite sweaty.

Waking up in a Foreign Field Somewhere

Everyone else woke up today with Friday on their mind, TGI Friday etc. I wake up wanting more of the same. I should like to do the camp sleepover more often and note with interest that I am now old enough to stay there the whole week.
Last night we did many campfire songs and the girls did the pat-a-cake chant and we all went for a walk in the woods with our torches and everyone came back although I did fall over and get stung by nettles.
Lights out was at 10 and we got to play football today before the usual non-sleepover people arrived.
There were Jackson Pollock-style art things where the paint went everywhere and they shut off the tap supply because we were making a mess and the teachers had to dress up in all the clothes from lost property to do their song'n'dance and by the time the day finished I fell asleep on the bus home and they actually got worried because they couldn't wake me up. But Bud still made me go to swimming lessons. Then it rained on me.
And here is the end of the series of Nanna photos, we shall say goodbye to her soon at the funeral. Apart from the special fishing-with-paperclips game she made for me, I shall particularly remember that, for a northern monkey, she sounded normal most of the time unless you put her in the same room as a Geordie, when she would suddenly revert to Trouble at T'mill and put a whippet on me old flat cap when the bwt comes in.

Lord of the Sleepover!

Only recently I missed the Cub Scouts sleepover at Action Stations at the Royal Naval Dockyard because I was having a long weekend in the rain in Torquay. So I leapt at the chance to stay over at the YMCA and do camping with fires and singsongs and activities and breakfast and hunting your own supper and digging your own igloo or was it latrine and playing a new game called Lord of the Flies.
And so it came to pass that we had a family diaspora. Jof was in Eastbourne picking up Nannas' handbag from where she'd died. Bud was in London picking up more artillery shells and I was in Southampton picking up new and interesting phrases from my camp-mates.
I am currently out of Greentooth™ range (no electricity on the moors) so will have to update my escapades tomorrow.
Continuing my brief rail-related look at Nanna from happier times past, see her feeding me on a surprise visit to her house (I didn't know the train went that far) and doing the special Nanna double-wave watching me on the little train at Marwell Zoo, why have only a single wave when you have 2 arms.

This loss leaves Grandad as the last Gran standing, the old son of a Gunner*, and me the head of a very small family.
*His dad was a Colonel in the Royal Artillery, so he fired a lot of guns

For Her, ze War ist Over

A story about wisdom, experience and judgement, and how we all don't have any. The synopsis reads as follows (the novel is in French)
What's the connection between a call girl, a bourgeois and a bride? 
None, except that all were imprudent enough to try an anti-ageing ... which sent them to the cemetery cream! 
He does not know it yet, but to find the murderer, the Superintendent Max Gebhardt can only count on one thing: human error ... and not just his!
Today I had a really good time because we did the Pirate ship obstacle course and the team effort where you have to do the obstacle course holding hands in a long line and we played Ninja Chinchilla again and then it was time for the Leap Of Faith.
It's more of a Swing Of Trust, you have a rope swing over a pit of gloopy spludge and you have to hold on tight, curl yourself into  a little ball and welease yourself Woderick at the other side.
Sadly the strength of my grip has not kept pace with the circumference of my midriff and I parted company with the rope and plummeted like a plump child into the slough of muddy glupp. Of course, once you've gone in, you might as well go in again so I did a variety of silly leaps and dives and we did sliding down the hill on my towel and my laundry had to go in on the hot wash. In addition, they dropped me when carrying me over the Pirate rigging, I fell through it, did 1/2 pike and twist with demijohn and tremolo and hit the ground. My ribs hurt and I had to have an accident form to go with the welts, weals and rope burns on my back.
Upon my return I had a Grade 1 haircut as specifically requested, because I have a little hot head in the sunshine. The nice cutter lady pretended to leave me half-cut with 2 different profiles but then she finished and I showed off my gleaming bonce in the park.
 Then I went home to Jof and gave her a big hug because Nanna had died at lunchtime. She slipped away quietly from her pain, a war finally over and one that she shouldn't have had to fight. I choose to remember her as the person she was, a giggly northerner who liked playing games with me.