Home From Home

[Being back from holibobs today, I’ve finally got around to putting a post together about our excursion earlier in the year. I’ll probably get around to writing about the one we recently returned from sometime around Christmas…]

The OED defines the word haven as being “a place of shelter and safety; refuge”; Collins doubtless has a similar view, though having recently holidayed in a Haven Holiday Park I’d seriously question this.

It’s true that it rained every day, which didn’t help matters, though any spirits which weren’t dampened by drizzle were swiftly extinguished by the misery of the staff whose ability to raise a smile was on a par with my body’s ability to undergo childbirth.

The Britishness of the weather aside, the place resembled Auschwitz-on-Sea with not dissimilar facilities. The soft play area smelled of damp (maybe the ‘softness’ was attributable to the furry mould and exotic fungi), the outdoor activities were boarded shut, and what was optimistically referred to as a “beach” consisted of a series of irregular rocks waiting to lacerate the cold white feet of anyone with the foolish courage to venture seawards. No doubt some brave souls made a break for the surf in the past, though were probably thwarted when the bloody stumps of what remained of their legs could no longer support their weight and they fell earthwards in slo-mo in a manner akin to Willem Dafoe’s death scene in Platoon, only to be swept out by the merciless tide as if the tragedy had never occurred.

Looking at the clientele, I felt quite underdressed without a football shirt, a cranial tattoo, and accompanying baseball-capped kids and an enormous wife. We gathered in the entertainment complex nightly for an evening of what could loosely be termed “entertainment”, consisting primarily of bingo, bingo, and more bingo during which conversation of any sort was seriously frowned upon. Woe betide the person who dared to utter a word as he/she was likely to be pounced upon by a gaggle of Neanderthal ladies wielding those special blunt pens (I think they’re called dabbers – the pens, not the ladies), their bingo wings propelling them across the room like pikey pterodactyls. Maybe it’s best that they don’t let them use sharp implements. But I shouldn’t mock; it’s serious stuff as failing to stab a little number on your sheet may have led to missing out on such “prizes” as colouring-in pencils or a lucky gonk.

Attached to the entertainment hall was a café which served up a selection of inedible (and instantly refundable) meals. Tuesday’s ‘Curry Night’ seemed to be no more than an excuse to throw the previous week’s collective leftovers into a pot, along with a few spices to mask the flavour of rancid offerings, and serve it up en masse to people whose taste buds had been mashed by lager the night before.

Luckily the caravan was comfy, which was useful as it’s where we spent much of our time; particularly the toilet which we became very familiar with after the aforementioned Tuesday.

All in all, the best thing about Donniford Bay Haven Holiday Park (for the purposes of search engines, that’s Donniford – yes, “Donniford” Bay Haven Holiday Park) was the road out of there. “Look daddy, the sea’s all brown.” observed our four-year-old as we were leaving via the cliff-top road. And brown it indeed was – coincidentally the colour of the curry, both on its way in, and its way out. Maybe there’s a more sinister reason for the correlation.

The Mark Of A Man

In a recent conversation with Dan, we established that the true sign of masculinity was twofold: namely, shed ownership and the ability to bear children. Being in possession of two of each, I can therefore only assume that testosterone courses around my veins like Usain Bolt after a couple of coffees.

A Cure For Society's Ills

A debate has broken out in work lately regarding the treatment of criminals.

During the lunchtime collective surfing of the BBC Newspages (which invariably contain a daily glut of stories about society’s transgressors), much head-shaking and grumbling is visible from the other side of my desk.

The head shaker’s solution involves a zero-tolerance approach to criminality, advocating the state-sanctioned termination of perpetrators irrespective of misdemeanour, from paedophilia to thievery to, err… scrumping, and to this end a number of inventive methods of snuffing-out have been suggested. These range from the use of large vats of acid, to quarries and lots of concrete, to gassing (though as I recall, a little chap with a cheeky moustache had a not dissimilar idea some sixty-odd years ago, much to the world’s chagrin).

These right wing solutions don’t sit quite right with me, and my woolly-hearted liberalism believes that using criminals as landfill can never be justified. Indeed, killing anybody, on a basic human level, is more than a little morally dubious, no matter how creative or amusing their dispatch.

By way of compromise, I’ll concede that maybe they could be given a fighting chance, with,perhaps, the new Wembley Stadium converted into some sort of gladiatorial arena where terrified rat boys can scamper round in rags in an effort to save themselves from a tooled-up Tony “Maximus” Martin wielding a blunderbuss to pepper them with buckshot.

To go down the route of social cleansing is foolish though. If there were no criminal fraternity in society, what would pensioners find to tut about? Or Daily Mail readers twitch their curtains at?

That’s not to say, however, that I’m not in favour of the systematic culling of the following individuals: Caroline Quentin (see posts passim), Cher, Chico, all weathermen, Matthew Davenport from Form 4G. I think the world would be a much better place without them. Well, my world anyway…

Maybe He Just Skips Breakfast?

As I tootle to work in the morning in my little blue car, I see some familiar faces in the cars around me, as they’re also tootling towards their respective workplaces at exactly the same time. One such face belongs to a be-suited chap with an aggressive sea-faring beard, who drives a much larger, greener car. Green would seem to be an appropriate colour as I often encounter him in my rear-view mirror, typically at the lights, and watch with fascination as he busies himself scooping out and gorging on the contents of his nose.

With a furrowed brow he examines his fingers like he’s choosing the appropriate blade of a Swiss Army knife, before plunging the appropriate digit into each nostril in turn and emerging triumphantly with his mucous prize. He then pops these valuable comestibles into his waiting mouth.

I’m not sure what it is about being in a car (and I’m sure he’s not the only one), where there’s an erroneously-perceived distance between you and the outside world. A car is an extension of your home, and being as you are, surrounded by personal effects and the comfortable knowledge that the space in which you sit is owned (or at least partially-owned) by you, there’s a tendency to relax in your automotive kingdom.

For those who regularly scoff bogeys during lengthy drives - you’re surrounded by glass. We can still see you, you know.

Freeman Freeway

71-year-old Morgan Freeman's in a bad way after he totalled his car by rolling it over a couple of times and landing in a ditch. It just goes to show that it's always the ones you least expect to be road hogs that are burning up the tarmac like teenagers. Driving Miss Daisy my arse. I bet he installed those blue flashing lights under Jessica Tandy's Bentley and put a 1000 megawatt amplifier in the boot. The man's a menace...

On-Board Entertainment

A particularly unsavoury story in the news on Friday concerned a man who stabbed and beheaded a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus as it trundled across the Canadian prairies.

Having traversed Australia in the same way I know just how boring long Greyhound journeys can be, and have previously in this blog, documented a succession of journeys during which my lovely wife and I were forced to watch My Big Fat Greek Wedding seven times on the on-board telly.

By the fifth viewing I was losing the will to live; by the sixth, the red murderous mist was starting to descend, and by the seventh, the sweet release of death itself would have been welcome reprieve to the constant jaunty bouzouki music and cross-cultural gaggery.

Out Of This World Looky-Likey

My lovely other half proffered a bizarre lookalike while walking around Morrison’s the other day. On viewing one of the larger plastic bottles of milk (the one that weighs as much as a cow’s udder and is impossible to pour into a cup of coffee without dumping a sixth of its content, thereby rendering any hot beverage undrinkable) she confessed to being reminded of the alien’s head (from Alien).


Can’t see it myself, but I wonder just how terrified Ripley would be, scurrying towards the escape hatch, with six pints of semi-skimmed sloshing around behind her.