Evidence that seaside holidays can feature all kinds of exciting fun and adventure

Here are some experiences from our holiday in Tenby, South Wales, last week.

Newer, more naive followers now expecting pictures of the Great Outdoors, such as sandy beaches, seascapes and bird life, look away now, or go here ... pictures of oceans on the National Geographic website

So, Saucepan-gate.



This is the second time this year we've rented the same Tenby holiday cottage. We went there at Easter, too, when we took our grown-up ex-Masterchef-contestant-and-cook-extraordinaire daughter with us. She was our chef for the week and the reason why, when we got home, we only battled through our front door by wearing elastic pants and breathing in.

She'd brought on holiday with her at Easter a selection of knives and other equipment from her own kitchen. But at the end of the week when she arrived back at her house in London, she realised she'd left a favourite pan behind at the cottage.

We knew we'd be going back at some point - it's the best cottage ever, overlooking the beach but only one minute's walk from the biscuit aisle at Tesco, so we've been there six or seven times now.

I texted my daughter last Saturday to say, 'We're here', and she replied with Hope you're having a lovely time Was your journey good? What's the weather like? Is my pan still in the cupboard?

I took the above picture and texted it to her. 'Yes! That's my PAN!' came the reply, as though we'd been on an episode of Who Do You Think You Are and I'd shown her a photograph of a relative in New Zealand she lost touch with in the 1980s.

We don't have a car and so travel by train. Taking this large, heavy pan back with us - one of those you can lift BEFORE you've cooked rice in it but not afterwards - wasn't an option. And we refused to send it back via the Post Office even though she texted, 'But I want it NOW.' We could see that little venture becoming a saga involving boxes, packing material, sticky tape, string, broken nails, twenty pounds for postage and a day of our holiday gone. That wasn't the kind of holiday we'd had in mind. I for one had been looking forward to the long hikes around the Welsh coast reading in cafes.

I'm sure there ARE activity holidays one can go on of this ilk called 'Packing for Pleasure' or 'Partying with Parcels', held in country houses in Shropshire, with string seminars and polystyrene packing material workshops, and evenings around a log fire discussing different types of knots. And I'm sure people who sign up for those holidays are very nice and not in need of urgent psychiatric treatment at all.

In the end, when some other members of our clan came to visit us for the day, we asked them to take the pan, and put it in the back of their car, so that just before Christmas, when we see them, it can have its second vacation of the year in our kitchen until we see our daughter. I am tempted to pack it up and put it under our tree as her Christmas present. In fact, so I can do it in style, I might book myself on a seasonal package holiday of the type described above, perhaps called 'Christmas and Cardboard For Fun'.

I had all sorts of other typical seaside adventures to tell you about, but the saucepan saga has taken a whole blog post. These saucepans are needy types, wanting all the attention, and deliberately hiding in cupboards so as to cause a lot of fuss and bother just when people are busy in cafes trying to eat a whole piece of lemon drizzle cake the size of a semi-detached house.

Reasons for elastic pants #2


Comments

  1. About to leave the house for a while, I actually turned my computer ON (can never post comments on my phone) as I felt I just had to comment on this post. Fran, I almost had to look for clean "underpants" as they say Stateside. This post was so funny. One day, when you've finished your current WIP, you NEED to write a book about the trivia of life. Honestly. I need a book like this in my life. Look, I turned my computer on for you. Greater love hath no woman...;)

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    1. I think I may even end up writing the book you suggest BEFORE finishing the current WIP. I seem to find the trivial nonsense so much easier! I'm so pleased your computer got turned on because of my blog post ...

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  2. If Gordon Ramsay were there, he'd have yelled terrible obscenities at you for selfishly putting your holiday rest and relaxation ahead of the culinary needs of a chef.

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    Replies
    1. Ha ha. If Gordon Ramsay had been there, I'd have handed him the pan, and said 'Cook us a meal, sunshine, but without any of that silly pea foam, please'.

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  3. You probably could have dropped your suitcases in the pot & carried it that way!!

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    Replies
    1. I guess travelling with a saucepan as luggage could well have made sure we got a table to ourselves on the train ...

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  4. I am SO relieved that the prodigal saucepan is beginning its journey home.
    I had sensed something amiss in the cosmos; thank God that's been cleared up.

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  5. I have a favourite pan too. I wasn't in this flat even five minutes before realising there wasn't room for it in any of the cupboards, so I gave it to my son, who also loves it and it gets used every week all winter. I still think of it as 'my' pot.

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    Replies
    1. From Marty, the prodigal pan. From you, the 'no room at the inn' pan. We're getting quite Biblical.

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  6. Thank goodness it was still there ! Things have a habit of going missing from holiday homes. Imagine trying to explain the extra weight in your luggage if you'd holidayed abroad !

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    1. Tenby is a six hour train journey for us from the Midlands, so technically we think of it as 'abroad' as we never go overseas. It helps us to think of ourselves as intrepid adventurous explorers.

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  7. There's no such thing as a free meal ?

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    1. .... unless we take our daughter along on holiday with us in which case we get restaurant style food which she's often shopped for. Bliss!

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  8. For raising a laugh, your posts are copper-bottomed. You certainly have a handle on this one.

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