I committed to the idea of writing a blog post a day in September knowing full well I’d be spending a week of that month on holiday. I’m sat by the pool right now, legs dangling in cool water and writing this in retrospect.
Today (yesterday) my prompt was my favourite TV shows. How boring. I’ll not watch a single second of TV whilst I’m here in Portugal so I’m going to write about whateverthehell I choose.
So Today (Yesterday) was Holiday Day One. And it went something like this:
There was nothing rude about a 0430 alarm call to rouse me from a too short sleep. I’d packed the night before and ohsoverysmartly laid out my clothes. Out of bed, teeth brushed, dressed, in the car and on my way to collect the youngest of our brood. Warp speed to the airport, straight through security, airport pint at 0615…
….through check in, “to the left, sir, the left, to the left, no the other left”, and safely ensconced in the pressurised capsule which will launch us five miles into the air and 1260 miles south to sunnier climes.
I was surrounded by old ladies, old men, and a party hellbent on celebrating Jills’ 40th in the Algarve. You go girls.
I tried to sleep. I’m a good sleeper. I can sleep a n y w h e r e. I slept in a hole in the ground at a murder scene once. But the terrible posture, lack of leg room, and jostling of the queue for the toilets prevented my slumber.
Arriving in Faro the heat hit. I think it’s less the actual temperature and more the differential which makes an Englishman sweat. Whilst waiting for a taxi to the train station a thought struck me;
The distance from the earth to the sun is approx. 93 million miles. The difference between the distance from the north east of England to the sun and the Algarve to the sun must be, in cosmic terms, inconsequential. Within the region of 00000.1 of a percent. Yet the difference in heat, in temperature, is incredible. The Goldilocks Zone must be a tiny ribbon around the sun. How terrifying is that?
The train from Faro to Cacela was an hour. Then a short hop in a neighbours car landed us at home for the next week.
A few beers, a bite to eat, then 10 hours of heavenly sleep. So ended day one.
