TV ate my life

I'm back from Center Parcs. I know I've been going there since I was about 10, but I think it's still one of my favorite holiday locations. I love how the wildlife comes to your door to be fed. When we arrived we had three ducks come up to the back door begging for food, we were visited by squirrels and swans and all kinds of birds, and at night a bunch of mice came and cleared up the leftovers. And the pool at Sherwood is just so awesome, especially the slides and the Rapids, which I must have been down about 50 times. Poppy is old enough to go down the more gentle first half now, so she just kept insisting I go with her again and again. My favorite slide is the bid tube slide though. It's supposed to have little LEDs above you all the way down but it was broken this week so it's pitch black the whole way down, which you might not think is good, but is actually really is because it makes all the twists and turns much more unexpected.

I'm covered in bruises though, mostly from the Rapids. We call them Rapids wounds and they are kind of a mark of honor, in a silly, jokey way.

I also kind of love how inclusive the whole place is. Like most of the restaurants have vegan, vegetarian, gluten free, dairy free etc menus, which is massively refreshing after the choice of vegetarian food in Disneyland! (mostly a choice of vegiburger and chips or margarita pizza) Also, little things, like all the maps placed around the village are also tactile maps, and everywhere is set up to be helpful to people with kids or breastfeeding mums, like it's easy to get prams everywhere, and they actually have sheltered buggy parking outside everywhere. Not I need those, but it's very nice that it's there for people who do. It's also lovely that there are no cars in the village. Even if you do get a bit wet when it rains, it's nice to go for a walk and not see any cars, just hoards of people walking and cycling around. So yeah, definitely my favorite holiday, at least within the UK. I'm not saying I'd choose it over a fortnight in Santorini, but for somewhere an hour and a half up the motorway, it's seriously awesome.

I do however always return absolutely exhausted because it's a pretty active holiday. Luckily I'm not back at work til Monday, so now I get to rest up and write some fanfic and catch up on some comics on Marvel Unlimited for a few days. Well, after the laundry is done!

Funniest moment of the holiday:
Going through security at the little gate near the hotels, I sent my bag through the scanner and then walked through the gate, and the guy on he other side started staring at me. I kind of shifted nervously and then looked at my mum to check I hadn't missed him saying something but she didn't appear to have noticed anything. I looked back at the guy, he was still staring. I smiled and went to pick up my bag, thinking if the scanner thought it had found something he would stop me and ask to look inside. Instead, he looked at me more intently and said "Irish!"

I had to laugh. He was playing guess the nationality and he had been trying to place the black hair blue eyes combination!. He wasn't far wrong actually, although I'm English, my name is O'Brien and I'm of Irish descent. I feel a bit bad for not just telling him he was right, but I was just too surprised to think at the time.

Then there was the guy on the turnstiles at the Disneyland park itself who took out tickets and said "O'Brien. I've known some O'Briens in my time..." I didn't know quite what to say to that either!

Hilarious stuff! 😂😂😅

I'm back home.

Disneyland was kind of awesome, in a loud, child-oriented and absolutely exhausting way. I had fun, but now I'm home I feel like I need to sleep for a week to recover. Poppy had a great time, but I think she feels the same way. We went on a lot of rides though (Ratatouille was my favourite), and the hotel was really nice, though for some reason they have the heat turned up way too high everywhere, so you can't put your coat on in your room then walk to the exit without feeling like you're going to melt. Ditto eating breakfast, you have to wear as few clothes as possible or you wind up feeling ill. Even in the room, it was impossible to turn the air conditioning down to a comfortable level, so we had to leave the window open every night. Very strange, but never mind. The pool in the hotel was really nice, and it had a good waterslide.

On the last day, we went on Crush's Coaster. We hadn't done it any earlier because we thought it would be too rough for Poppy, but then we saw a video of it on the TV in the room and it didn't look that bad, and she really wanted to try it. When we got there there were warnings about it being dark and drops and sharp turns etc, but she insisted, and we thought it can't be that bad. It actually was. I know I'd have hated it when I was five. After you get through the underwater scenes it goes really dark and starts whipping you around, going up and down and you can't see what's going on at all. I was sure she would hate it, but when we got off she said she wanted to do it again. Apparently it's her favorite. This is the same kid who won't go into a cave with a fake dragon in because it's too scary. She's an unusual kid.

Security there is insane, by which I mean really good. Everyone gets scanned walking into the Disney Village, any bags have to go through an airport-type scanner. Walking into the hotels you have to get scanned by a guy with one of those metal detector wands, and there are security with dogs and sniffer dogs walking around everywhere. It's weird though that they don't scan the kids. Like, walking into the hotel they didn't check Poppy, and one day we got the bus from the hotel so we had to go through the main security, my mum took my bag so Poppy and I could go through the no bags line and go get a fast pass for something while she queued to get the bags scanned, they don't make you walk through a metal detector in that queue, you just get scanned by a guy with a wand thing again, and again he didn't check Poppy. Surely having observed this, some nutter could have their kid carry their weapons in for them. I thought that was a bit worrying to be honest.

But yeah, lots of fun. Lots of walking though, seriously, my watch records my steps and one day I did over 20000.

This is weird though. Because it was me and my mum taking my niece without either of her parents, and having heard stories about people being stopped at the airport and missing their flights because security don't believe you have a right to take the kid out of the country, we decided to take a letter. Because my mum is paranoid about things going wrong, she paid to have the thing notarized. This involved official documents signed by Jennie and Martin, witnessed by the notary public, copies of everyone's ID, official stamps, the whole thing is bound with ribbon and wax, it's insanely posh. On the way out, nobody even questioned us, despite Poppy having a different surname to both of us. Then on the way back into the UK, we were stopped. It was fine, because we had the most official document ever, but it seems very odd to stop us on the way back into the country. To me, it would make sense to check stuff like that before someone took a child out of the country, because if you were bringing them back home presumably you're not up to anything nefarious, you're just going home. It's leaving that you are more likely to be up to something. So we asked the guy, and he said that it is one the way back you'll get stopped. On the way out, the airline should check but they don't always. Isn't that a worry? I mean, if someone steaks a kid, they are okay to take them out of the country with no issues, it's only if they try to bring them home they face issues? Seems totally backward to me. So next time if we ever do it again, we probably won't pay to get the documents made official, because once you've had your holiday, who cares if you get a little delay on the way home while they ring the parents to make sure the non-oficial letter is legit? OTOH, you can guarantee that if you don't do it, you will get stopped, can't you?!

Anyway, I now have a day to recover from Disneyland before we're heading off again, to Center Parcs for a few days. I have no idea how things ended up being so close together. Its with Poppy being at school now and us having to plan things round school holidays, I suppose. I think I'm going to sleep all day tomorrow!

Do you ever watch those airline security programs? You know the ones set at customs where they find all the weird crap that people have decided to bring into the country without declaring? There's usually someone with drugs, someone with some awful, maggot filled thing that's a delicacy in their won country, and then (usually on the Australian ones) you get these Chinese families who have said they have no food, but actually have cases and cases full of stuff. Not even totally weird stuff (sometimes it is, like birds nest) just everyday stuff, bought in a store and not at all terrifying. They usually get a huge fine for not declaring it and often refuse to pay and have it seized. And all the while you're watching, you're thinking "What the fuck? Do they not know they have food in Australia?"

Well, that's my mum right now. We're going to France tomorrow, to Disneyland, and you should see the stuff she's packing; bags of crisps, pot noodles, mugshots, teabags, UHT milk. It's hilarious, it's like she actually doesn't know that food exists in France too. I get why though, Disneyland is expensive, she's thinking if we don't want to eat out every meal it'd be good to not have to. But that won't make us look any less crazy as we go through security.

I'm (almost) all packed and ready to go. I have two new audiobooks on my iPod, about sixteen DVDs that we're probably not going to watch packed in my laptop bag and far too many scrappy tops for the weather we are probably going to have.

Five adults, one small child and a flatulent, diabetic dog in a caravan just outside of Great Yarmouth for seven days. It's going to be interesting. Or it's going to be Hell. Not sure which at this point. Also, leaving my brother home alone worries me, he has been known to borrow my car without asking (I'm taking the keys with me) and is both an alcoholic and a drug user. I'm sure he'll be fine, but not 100% sure, you know?

Anyway, nothing I can do about it.

Hopefully the holiday will be good. It's a Haven park, which makes it sound like it's going to be super lame, but my niece if Four and taking her on a too hot beach holiday abroad just didn't seem fair. Of course, my mum is taking her to Disneyland in Paris later in the year, but whatever. I'm not jealous. Okay, I totally am.

Anyway, better sleep. I have to be up and out of the house pretty early in the morning.

Well, we're at the airport on the way back. The check in here has been smoother than on the way here. This tome it was me holding up security though, with my bottle of water accidentally left on my luggage. There were no firms to fill on here though, no half hour waits, and the staff are much more polite than at stanstead. Apart from the disaster arriving, it's been a nice holiday, we had a look around Graz, went to Vienna and day, went up the Schlossberg, had a lot of Kaffee und Kuchen, used the sauna in the hotel and I even spoke some German. Go me! The flight leaves in about an hour, we're staying g over at my nanas tonight, then we'll arrive back in Hull tomorrow evening.

Ryanair seriously sucks. I'll explain when I have chance. On the plane right now, delayed on the runway. Sigh.

I'm going to start this post by mentioning that I drank five bottles of Stella tonight, and so any spelling errors and generally moronic comments are probably because of that.

Well, the torrential rain part 2 that was forecast for the weekend hasn't started yet, which is good because I really want to manage to get to London tomorrow. Missing my flight would kinda ruin the holiday. So I'm hoping it will hold off until the afternoon, because the train goes at 1.05 tomorrow.

I spent most of tonight packing, which it a ridiculously tiring activity, and I don't know why my case is coming so dangerously close to the 20kg limit, I don't remember packing that much stuff. But apart from a few things I need to add in the morning, I'm all done. Apparently my dad is pissed off about the state of my bedroom and is threatening to go up there and tidy it while I'm away, which is a little weird, a total invasion of privacy and slightly worrying. But it would save me a job I suppose. I'll try to sort it a little before I go tomorrow though.

The new job is still going well, although that might have something to do with the fact that I haven't done any actual work yet. I have a week of training once I get back, and the actual job starts 2 weeks on Monday. I don't think I'll have too many problems though, I'm starting to get a feel for what I'll be doing. It's a little strange to be working with someone who I knew at school, but in a good way, I think.

If all goes according to plan, I'll arrive in London tomorrow at 4ish, and be at Gatwick by 5ish to meet my friend. The flight doesn't leave til nearly 11, and sometime early Sunday morning, we'll arrive in Gran Caneria. Where the weather will hopefully be better than here!

I'm not sure if I'll get online in the morning, or whether I'll find an internet cafe there, so this might be my last entry for a week. Or it might not, depends on lots of things, but I'll try to get online while I'm away if I can.

Now I need to sleep before I nod off at the computer!