The Snapper and I
had not been away for two and a half years, during which time we’d lived
through many stressful life events. We really needed a break, so I ignored the
fact that we couldn’t afford it, surfed d’internet and booked us a lovely
little self-catering housheen called ‘O Serro’, a mile up a hillside outside
the Portuguese village of Santo Estevao.
At this point I
need to point out that I find little so irritating as scribblers waxing lyrical
about their time away in hot climes, while you’re sitting at your kitchen table
in the West of Ireland, sheltering from the wind and rain, sipping your tea as
you try to figure out how to pay the leccy bill. The only reason I feel free to
write about my rare holidays is that I am never one of those columnists who
goes ‘away’.
You know the type
- ‘So and So is away’, ‘Blah de Blah will be back next week’. They are, to my
mind, a bunch of slackers. If I have a colyoom to write, I will send in copy
week in week out, whatever terrible or wonderful events might be taking place
in my life.
Despite holidays
generally being considered testing for relationships, the Snapper and I enjoyed
a perfectly uneventful and exceedingly relaxing time. She read a big thick book
each day as I stared out into space, regarding the view of olive trees and the
nature of the Universe.
Then we went out
to dinner in inexpensive local restaurants, drank too much wine, and the next
day did the same again. I swam in the pool at 5 each day, by which time I had
it all to myself, and a couple of times we went into the town of Tavira, the
jewel of the as yet unspoilt East Algarve.
It was a fantastic holiday, yet almost completely void of scribbleworthy events. But there was that strange business with my belly and the burning of the baked beans.
In our little holiday kitchen there was a set of black hi-tec smooth glass electric hobs, with little red lights for controls, a locking device and a Masters Degree from Harvard University.
It required only the slightest of fingertip touches to
activate the hobs.
Being ‘orribly
Ingerlish, I enjoy a fry wherever I am, so I was scrambling up the eggs on one
hob, turning the rashers in the pan on the other, while the beans were just
heating up slowly on the back hob - except no, they weren’t - they were
bubbling away like mad bad beans intent on baking themselves into a vile
glutinous goo.
Looking down at
the super-sensitive control button, I saw that somehow the temperature of the
back hob had gone from a lowly ‘3’ to a high ‘9’, so I quickly turned it down,
only to find a few seconds later that it was somehow back up again.
Did the hob have a mind of its own?
Did the hob have a mind of its own?
Was it built by
Germans to confound this dumb English mind?
Was it some kind
of safety device that tried to stop tourists eating bad things that might kill
them prematurely?
No, because if it
was that, the beans would survive while the super-fatty Portuguese bacon would
have been zapped to oblivion. Waving a finger an inch above the button I
watched the numbers riding up from 3 to 4, 5, 6. Aha! The controls were
designed so that you didn’t even have to get a mucky paw-print upon them.
Trouble was, as I
reached over to stir another pot, your scribbler’s belly was hanging over the
controls. My voluminous middle regions were casting a shadow which was turning
up the hob and causing my baked beans to bubble and burn.
‘Tis a sad and
terrible day when your belly ruins your food before it has a chance to digest
it, but it gave us something to laugh about as we ate our breakfast, and the
fact that this sad tale was the only noteworthy event of our 10 day stay shows
what a splendid holiday we had.
Indeed, I wondered
what on earth I’d write about if I lived there, with my notepad blank for over
a week. We had barely left Knock Airport on our return when I was off
scribbling like a mad thing.
As I turned Shaaany
Car onto the N17 from the airport exit, a giant sign declared that the
McWilliam Park Hotel was just 15 minutes away. A yard further on, a roadsign
stated Claremorris was 28 kilometres away, which set off my mental arithmetic
buds, arriving at the conclusion that to get to the hotel in the advertised
time I’d have to drive around 112kph, which is not only illegal but massively
unlikely, given the multitude of slow Holy Drivers travelling the roads around
the Marian Shrine.
I mooted the hotel
owners might argue that when they said ‘15 minutes’ they didn’t really mean it
literally, but more, that conversational Irish kind of 15 minutes, as in
‘Sure it’s only 15
minutes away, d’ya know, like!’
which can mean
anything up to an hour.
Whatever the
reality, it was great to be back in the land of obfuscation and paradox. A mere
half hour later I stood in a roadside shop, staring at two different special
offers for Diet Coke. One shelf had a label offering 1.25 litres for only
€1.00, while a few feet away another offer suggested I should buy 1 litre of
Diet Coke for only €1.50.
My brainbox was
blitzed by the early morning flight, so I called over the Snapper.
“Which one do you
want, babe? I can’t work out what it all means!”
“It means we’re
home my love!” she offered wisely, and for that my notebook is truly grateful.
For information about O Serro, contact:
Joe and Kersten
Funck-Knupfer
Tel. +351
281961692