We booked the Friday off before the bank holiday. Everyone else seemed to have done the same and what, in my head was a thirty-minute journey was double that. Driving into the country however, has its advantages. I found dubbin heaven. In a city, nobody even knows what the leather preserver is. I was asked if I needed it for my shoes but answered cheekily it was for my lederhosen that were beginning to chafe.
We like good coffee and good teas. It disappoints, no, it irks, when a menu announces loose leaf tea, you get charged for the privilege and instead of the real thing, a generic, tasteless bag of sawdust is served.
We strolled into a strangely named shop called Bloated Visage or something similar. They also sell footwear but with no seating to try the things on. I did a heron impersonation that Bill Oddie would have appreciated. A ballerina couldn't have bettered my balance and deftness of technical skill in stooping to try on a trainer that looked like a Mallard.
It became the time for something to eat. It always is. Hunger makes the body do incredible things. I've never seen such a pretence of infirmity that could win Oscars, to get a seat in the Waiting Room of a farm shop cafe. It looked like a zombie apocalypse.
Cake consumed, we ventured to the farm shop. We made the stupid mistake of not picking up a basket and mistaken for food tourists, were almost stampeded by an excitable herd of shoppers. There wasn't the British Queuing System in operation and we slowly secured a sensibly-sized tub of olives. We browsed the bread and cheeses and I narrowly avoided an arm to my windpipe as a rich "lady" chose her weekend fare. It may have been a clumsily-executed romantic gesture I idly speculated as a searing pain inflicted by a war chariot clipped my ankle. A handful of olives leapt from the tub to seek their freedom to all points of the compass. Dragging my leg behind me like the other zombies, I made my way back to the safety of the car where blood, sweat and tears were removed with wet wipes.
Swopping drivers, we reached our accommodation whose car park reminded me of the water jump in a 1500 metres steeplechase run. Navigating the terrain felt like I was part of the Royal Horse Artillery and towing a gun instead of handling a small suitcase on wheels.
Stepping inside the reception we were unluckily placed behind an obvious defaulter of the one-child-per-couple scenario. The automatic door had a strenuous 36-pass workout as people blinked in all directions. A squeaky floor greeted us noisily as we entered the room. I inspected the kettle and made the teas. Fine fare was prepared although cutting cheese with a teaspoon was tricky.
We adopted superb yoga poses with terrific spine alignment on the bed. The animal in me dictated second helpings. As I left the bed towards the banquet, I forgot the height of the bed and triple-jumped towards the wall whilst flinging my plate of food like a discus to create a new category of curtain stain, and at a record height! Leaping back onto the bed, unaided by a pole vault, to writhe, completed my athletic triumph.
Disturbed from fitful sleep by the rack of a mattress, indigestion, and the auditions for the Jolly Green Giant-with-a-weak-bladder competition in the room above, we awoke very pale, tired and and unable to form sentences at the prepaid breakfast but nodded in the right places to begin our next day of adventure.
NE
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