Practice Packing Our Bags

We now have 14 days to go until we depart from London Heathrow and as you can imagine those 14 days are pretty booked up with leaving parties, doctors appointments and panic attacks.

However, even with all that I deiced we needed to fit in a practice pack for a few reasons:

1) It's an excellent way to double check you have everything
We set aside a whole morning to do our practice pack and it didn't take long for it to become very clear that we had nowhere near all the stuff we needed. 

Whatever, we'd carry on anyway and start making a list on the side of all the bits we still had to get; that way we'd know how much space to allow ourselves in our backpacks for things we were yet to get.

However, this list soon got so large we had to abandon our practice pack and instead, spend 5 hours in Guildford buying everything from eye masks to padlocks.

2) I'm a control freak
Yep. I'll admit it, I really don't like the unknown and just being able to cross off knowing how big and heavy my bag is going to be from my list of stresses makes me a very happy boy.

3) Emma and I have very different ideas about what needs to be packed 
I'm very much a t-shirt and shorts will do kind of guy. Emma meanwhile wasn't sure how many, and I quote, "glamorous dresses" to take and persisted into bullying me into taking a shirt and a posh pair of shoes.

I DON'T EVEN WEAR POSH SHOES AT HOME!

To be fair to her though we do need some posh clothes so that we can go to this bar in Singapore.

But I did hope the practice pack would give me a chance to try and cut the weak from the chaff in Emma's Asia wardrobe.

Unfortunately, I failed miserably.

Firstly we decided to get all the clothes we wanted to take out and onto the bed to see what kind of a task we would be facing.

Emma and I went for two different strategies, personally, I decided to group my clothes by area of the body and separate them evenly.

Emma decided to go for the 'I am clearing out my wardrobe and this is what can go to the charity shop look'.

Callum = Left                                                            Emma = Right

We both had agreed that as we are going on such a long trip that there would be no point having a 'your stuff in your bag and my stuff in my bag' rule. Then I remembered that Emma is a sickly child who needs to take 6 months worth of inhalers and 6 months worth of contact lenses and I instantly realised why we'd agreed to split stuff.

Whilst stuffing my bag it dawned on me that I had vastly underestimated the size of my bag and with all my clothes, wash bag and first aid kit packed I still had around one third of an empty bag.

I now no longer have that; what I do have however is 6 months worth of inhalers and 80 millions pairs of contact lenses that are all waiting to explode in my bag.

Small gripes aside though it really wasn't too bad, we both now can take all we wanted without fear of never being able to get all the stuff back in the bags again and we even took them for a test run, 45 minutes of walking over uneven and sandy ground and nothing went wrong, which is a nice change for us.

So now all we need to do is wait these last 14 days, tick off the 5 or so things still on our to-do list and THEN it will be time to take these bags out into the big wide world.

Booking Our First Hostel in Singapore

Light and water show, Singapore

After the American disaster in which we booked all of our hostels and hotels in advance on a completely non-refundable basis on the grounds of 'what could possibly go wrong?!' but then a mere week later changing our minds completely because 'yolo - let's just go NOW!', we have decided to book all of our accommodation as we go along this time. 

Of course, my inner control freak is going ballistic right now because OMFG what if we can't get WiFi and book somewhere in time?! What if everywhere is booked up?! What if we're left with the absolute DREGS?! *cue hyperventilation and making frantic wish lists on Airbnb*

Saying that there's definitely loads of good things about booking accommodation as you go along; it gives you more freedom as to how long you stay in a place; if you hate the place, you can quite easily up sticks and leave, knowing that you haven't got a whole trail of pre-booked hostels to stick to. On the other hand, if you love a place, then great, you can stay there as long as you like*! No commitments. No deposits to worry about. No cancellation fees. Zilch. 

*Or as long as your visa permits! Fun, fun, fun.

The first place we're going to is Singapore; so we decided to book our hostel in advance because, ya know, we don't want to get off the plane and have nowhere to stay. Especially as Singapore is hella expensive and not exactly the kind of place you can just "check into a hotel" if you're on any sort of budget. 

We booked our hostel through Agoda because I'd seen it recommended time and time again on various travel blogs as the best site for hostel bookings. The prices were really reasonable and a lot better value than a lot of other sites we looked at! 

The hostel we chose in the end worked out at about £9 each a night, which for Singapore, is pretty damn cheap! (I would share it on here but documenting our upcoming whereabouts, itinerary and bookings on the internet is a recipe for disaster). 

Of course, if I had all the money in the world, I would have loved to stay in this baby, but sadly £46 a night is just a tad out of our price range. 

We're both sooo excited now and with just three weeks to go until we leave it's starting to feel very, very real.

The Holiday From Hell | Part 6

Where the fuck is that anchor?

Now, as you might have gathered by now, our holiday had not gone quite how we expected it to. But we clung to the small crumb of comfort that possibly these unfortunate events could happen to someone else. 

This small crumb was about to be blasted away by a megaton nuclear bomb. 

As I have previously mentioned I am scared of boats, so Emma obviously thought that bullying me into hiring a speed boat would be a lovely way to reconcile our holiday. We walked along the sandy beach in glorious sunshine believing that today could really, finally be our day. 

We found a generic boat hire place that we had scouted out a few days previously. €35 for one hour hire plus whatever petrol we used. A bit steep but how often do you get your own speed boat and as ever, I agreed to keep Emma happy.

So the guy from the hire company started to run through the basics of the boat, steering, power, stowing the steps, where to find snorkel gear, the stuff you need to know. Now let me just say he was directing all this nautical knowledge at me, not because he was sexist or anything but because Emma had a glazed look in her eyes. He must have taken it as her just being bored, I meanwhile knew she was just picturing herself like James Bond tearing through the bay.

Remember that. Remember that she wasn’t paying attention at all. 

So, we set off towards two rocky islands which were about 15 minutes from the shoreline and apart from Emma stealing my baseball cap for a brief wonderful moment, all was well in my world; the sea was a mill pond of placidity with barely a rippling wave, the sun was hot, and I was actually starting to see the benefits of being out on the water.  

We came to the second island and decided to stop and try some snorkelling. To do that we needed to anchor the boat. Emma was at the front of the boat, so naturally I asked Emma to drop anchor, Emma took this direction very literally and threw the damn thing overboard like she was releasing a bird to flight. I watched as the weighty bastard tore down to the depths and took with it it’s metal chain and the ten feet of orange rope it was attached to. 

As the rope disappeared over the edge like a mouse down a hole, my first thought was that that shouldn’t happen; so naturally I went over to inspect the issue. I was just about to lift the hatch to inspect the rope that lead from it down into the sea when I was met by Emma saying AND I QUOTE: 

“Why are you checking it? You don’t need to check everything, it’s fine” 

So, rather than waste time squabbling in the middle of the sea. I slowly walked away from the hatch and let it be, which in hindsight, was a stupid thing to do. 

I found the snorkelling gear and we dived in for a swim. With snorkelling goggles and mouth apparatus equipped I immediately swam to front of the boat to inspect the anchor and the first thing I noticed was the lack of a fucking anchor. I came up above the water and nope no chain or rope leading from the boat to the water and nope no anchor under the water either. 

Shit 

The Anchor is gone 

SHIT 

Me: “EMMA THE FUCKING ANCHOR IS GONE” 

Emma: “What?” 

Me: “THE FUCKING ANCHOR IS FUCKING GONE” 

Emma: “Oh...fuck.” 

Emma swam round to meet me and inspect the seabed for our stray anchor, but no, it was gone. It was then we realised that without an anchor our boat had drifted off and was heading steadily towards the rocky islands which we were strictly told to avoid due to the shallow waters surrounding them. 

FUCCCKKKKK 

Swimming like a demented seal I made it to the boat and pushed it into reverse to pick up Emma. 

We sat in silence contemplating our options, our dire, dire options. 

Option 1) We stay put on the boat and try to dive and retrieve the anchor ourselves and just apologise for being late back. But then what if we couldn't find it and we were late back and then got double the ass whooping?!

Option 2) We head back and say nothing and pray to God they don’t check to see if the anchor is still in the boat. Why would they? No one LOSES A FUCKING ANCHOR. However, what if they do check and then it’s pretty obvious we have deliberately not told them as no one JUST MISPLACES AN ANCHOR! 

Option 3) We fess up instantly, say we’re sorry and get the hell out ASAP and hope to God they take it well. 

After much debate we went for option 3, the least likely to get us beaten up or murdered. But now we needed to re-work our story slightly as saying that Emma shot putted it over the edge of the boat, failing to consider that you may need to tie the anchor to the boat wouldn’t really help us. 

We changed the story to one where Emma wasn’t a complete tool and one in which she tied the end of the rope to the rail on the boat and it must have somehow come loose whilst we where swimming, after all we knew nothing about knots and the guy never showed us. A good story, a defendable story. 

We sat in silence in our boat too scared to return back and face whatever drama may ensue. We wanted to laugh, it was ridiculous – this doesn’t happen to anyone else, but the fear of what was coming was all too real, so we sat in silence. 

We made it back and our still happy rental guy was smiling and waving us in. 

Deep breath. Here we go: 

Rental Guy: “Did you go for a swim?” 

Me: “We lost your anchor. Oh yeah we went in just past the second island.” 

Rental Guy: “Did you see any sharks?”

Me” We lost your anchor. No we didn’t, are there any?” 

Rental Guy: “Oh no but I always like to see what people say!” 

Me: “We lost your anchor. Ha” 

Rental: “So let me just see what petrol you’ve used-” 

Me “We lost your anchor.” 

Rental Guy “WAT?” 

The next 10 – 15 minutes consisted of us telling our slightly made up story accurately enough to be believed but vaguely enough to avoid further questions.

What we soon learnt was that we could either pay a fine for the anchor or go back out, this time under the watchful gaze of rental guy, to look for it. By this point I had truly had enough of being on the water so I asked how much the fine would be. 

It was €100.

We got back in the boat. 

So we’re tearing towards the islands like we’re on a quest, if it had been a film then the ride of the valkyries would have been our backing music. It was somewhere fantastic between incredibly cool and incredibly awkward. 

And then my baseball cap which Emma had stolen was blown off her head by the wind and hurled into the sea. 

I could feel the rental guys scornful gaze. Of course we lost an anchor! We couldn’t even look after a hat. Rental guy begrudgingly rounded the boat to retrieve my sopping wet and now ruined hat and then, once again, we set back off towards the island. 

What soon became painfully apparent was that we had no idea where we had stopped, and despite our direction, rental boat guy refused to listen to us and seemed to go the opposite way to where we said. For some reason I think he disliked us. 

I mentioned to the rental guy that we had taken some pictures just before we jumped in, perfect. Maybe we could work out where we had been when Emma literally dropped anchor earlier. 

One thing I didn’t think about was that these pictures were of Emma, in her best vogue pose at the hull of the boat. Possibly the cringiest thing to show anyone, let alone the seething rental boat guy. 

But the icing on the cake came when he asked Emma to recreate the pose to help us try and work out the boat's position just an hour before. Now Emma, I can see, is in no mood. So with a face like thunder she slammed herself down at the hull and sat hunched over staring out to sea. Not quite the same as the original picture but even rental boat guy got her ever so subtle message ‘to shut the fuck up’. 

We searched and we searched for over an hour. And as much as we prayed we would, we didn’t find the anchor. 

The full impact of our Emma’s mistake was starting to hit. 

We still had two full days left in Corfu, and if we had to pay €100 to this guy we would be living on a much tighter budget than we had been, not awful, but we couldn’t afford any more unnecessary expenditure. 

But of course, fate was not so kind: 

€100 for the anchor. 

€35 for the boat hire 

€20 for petrol (including the petrol we used in the additional hour searching) 

€15 search and rescue fee 

Search and rescue fee. Let that sink in. We did the searching ourselves and the lack of the rescue was the reason we had to pay another €100 for the sodding anchor.

But we paid, I mean I paid, you see Emma had run out of money by this point anyway as she had convinced herself, somehow, that €200 was enough spending money for a week's holiday. 

Spoiler: it wasn't. 

So with the rest of the rental boat company gathered around us like snickering hyenas, I coughed up the €100 for her mistake. 

BUT WE WERE FREE! At least free enough to get the fuck off that beach and never return.

Despite the unmitigated disaster, we did actually gain something and we are now the proud owners of a rusting anchor laying somewhere just of the coast of south west Corfu. 

How many people can say that? 

Once off the beach we had to inspect our monetary situation. It was dire. We worked out if we budgeted we could make it stretch. 

That budget included: 

- Buying cereal to see us though lunch and breakfast 

- Scrapping any further plans for going out on any day

- Spending our evenings playing along to Radio 1’s innuendo bingo

- Listening to Scott Mills’ Radio 1 podcast 

- Drinking in our rooms and not in bars 

- Not buying anyone ANY presents 

- Sitting outside bars to steal Wi-Fi but never actually going in

- Playing a lot of card games 

- Sitting by the pool at our hotel 

The day after anchor gate, somewhere in-between finishing our small bowls of cereal and opening our 1.90 Euro wine we decided our story was so bad and hilarious that we should text in to the Scott Mills Radio show about how his show’s podcast was now saving our relationship.

What we didn’t expect was to be called back instantly and put on air, sharing our awful story with the millions of listener’s world wide. 

I hope you all had a good laugh. 

This story has already become a bit of a legend. It’s my go to talking point, a story that will NEVER EVER be one upped.

That said there are two camps this story splits people into: 

Camp 1) That Emma should have checked that the anchor was in someway attached to the boat before hammer throwing it over the side. 

Camp 2) That the anchor should either been attached or we should have SPECIFICALLY been told that it needed to be tied. (Which is utterly wrong and stupid.) 

I know a lot went wrong on our holiday, but this ranks number one, the cherry on top, the crowing glory. But, it was by no means the end of our endless bad luck.....

The Holiday From Hell | Part 5

*Originally posted on my blog at http://callumjw.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-holiday-from-hell-part-5.html*

I was a broken man the morning after that quad bike ride. I ached in every joint from the journey, I had a hangover from the booze I had consumed and I was sick to the back teeth of getting lost.

But we had paid for the quad bike, so it felt stupid not to use it. We examined our map with great care, and after much deliberation we settled on aiming for Kavos for two main reasons:  

1) It’s a world famous party town and here we are in our twenties, we couldn't not go

2) We drove so close to it last night we pretty much knew the way already.

At the hottest part of the day we climbed back onto quad and set off. We soon were reliving the nightmare of the previous evening, seeing ghosts of the horror, houses we passed, signs we missed and a lot more slow uphill driving.

But without much drama, we made it to Kavos.

Kavos, how do I describe it, the undeniable asshole of Corfu.

I have never been to a place before that just driving through made me want to get checked by my GP. Let me, in my best narrative mind give you a description:

A grey decrepit council estate sits roasting and rotting in the midday Mediterranean sun. Its inhabitants, a few runs below modern man on the evolutionary ladder, scuttle like cockroaches between drab greasy diners and empty hollow bars that, like the streets, still hold the remnants of the previous night’s debauchery. Litter swirls in miniature hurricanes and settles a few yards further along the street filled with more drab grey, more grease, more cockroaches.

All the while a slow ooze of people migrate in sweaty groups towards the beach, a veritable market of human flesh where the price of dignity lessens and self respect diminishes.

The world has turned upside down and here the primeval sludge of existence rules, Snapbacks and squads are the Kings and the STI sluts their Queens. Personality, intelligence and common sense are liquefied by alcohol and boiled away in the heat leaving nothing but an empty shell of idiocy.

Get the picture?

Now I’m not normally one to anger quickly or fast to become violent but as I stood staring at the horror one thing came to mind.

Nuke them, nuke the fuckers and then nuke them again. Roll in the army, navy, marines and air force. Call the exterminators, reopen Auschwitz. Load up handguns, machine guns, automatic rifles and rocket launchers. Send in a plague of locus, flood the land, let meteorites reign from the sky and PURGE this from the earth.

Luckily Emma had the EXACT same view, so after our hour long drive we spent 15 minutes in Kavos, and left again. Heading straight back to get rid of this accursed quad bike.

One thing our quad bike taught me is that for such a small island, the vast majority of Corfu really is quite shit.

Hit In The Face By a Stack of Trays at 30,000ft

*Originally posted on my blog at http://www.emmieleey.com/2015/12/hit-in-face-by-stack-of-trays-at.html* 

This is actually something that happened a pretty long time ago but I feel like enough time has passed now for me to write about it without blowing steam from my ears or praying that the ground will combust at my feet and swallow me up. 

The story I’m about to tell began at 30,000ft in the galley of an A380 Airbus. I was working the night flight back from Washington DC and for once, all was going pretty well. I’d been working as Cabin Crew for little under a month and was slowly starting to get the grips of things: the way in which you should present a hot towel to a customer, the correct way to put your hair in a bun and most importantly, how to make a smile and your will to live last for hours on end whilst you’re looking after hundreds of people in a small metal tube propelling itself through the sky. 

We were just in the process of clearing up after the second service and I had a million and one things running through my mind: I needed to get the man in 15B another pastry, the woman in 10F a landing card, the toilets needed a new toilet roll, a woman needed some paracetamol for her headache and I needed to make a start on clearing in trays, mugs, glasses and wrappers. 

I also needed about a week of non-interrupted sleep. 

I was faffing around in the galley doing something or other when I noticed a bunch of trays that weren’t being used. In an attempt to make myself useful, I stacked them up and looked for an empty canister to put them in. I locked eyes on just the one I needed, the one that just so happened to be on the highest shelf. I reached up and flung the trays into the canister and I was just about to shut it when BAM out of the canister and directly into my face they flew and HOLY SHIT. THE PAIN.

It turned out there was a pair of oven mitts at the very back of the canister – oven mitts that my short ass couldn’t see - that they had managed to ricochet away from. 

At first I thought my nose was broken. The pain was excruciating and it was the kind of seething agony that makes your vision all blurry and your head fuzzy. It was one of those situations which you know is funny – I mean, come on, who else could get hit in the face by a stack of trays in the galley of a plane – but at the time makes you burst into tears. The more Crew and passengers that huddled around me to make sure I was alright, the more I cried. I remember being so embarrassed that I was crying but I literally couldn’t control it; after all, my face felt like it had been fucking split in half. 

As I sat limply on a jump seat with a bag of ice pressed against my face trying to get over the delirium of pain that had consumed me, a Crew member came up to me and said he reckoned I’d have a couple of black eyes forming before I knew it. GOOD. THANK YOU FOR THAT, SIR. 

Once we landed, the manager saw that I still wasn’t in a good way and asked how I was getting home; I told her I was driving and after the initial horrified expression I received, she shook her head and said I should phone someone to pick me up because I was in no fit state to drive. Who would want to drive to Heathrow Airport at the crack of dawn to pick me up? I thought. There was only one person who sprung to mind: Callum. 

My first concern with texting Callum was that he wouldn’t be up. My second concern was that he had to be at work by 9 and, traffic dependant of course, it was a bit tight for time. But, by some miracle he happened to be awake and he replied instantly saying he’d get straight from his bed to the car. (Remember this. It will become important later). 

But, YAY. I was saved...at least I thought. 

Before I was free to leave I had to speak to the company’s Duty Managers who told me I should go to A&E when I got home. After being awake for so long, that was the last thing on Earth I wanted to do but I couldn’t be bothered to insist otherwise, so I just nodded and said something along the lines of “what a wonderful idea” and went on my merry way. 

I kind of expected Callum to go to the drop off point and wait because that would save us having to pay the extortionate parking prices at Heathrow, but he text me saying he’d parked up and was waiting in Arrivals. No matter. By this point my mascara was halfway down my face, my nose was bright red from where it had been smacked with the trays and I was so tired that the bags under my eyes could be seen from space; IN SHORT, I was willing to pay ten-fold the cost of parking if it meant getting out of that terminal any quicker. 

After wandering round arrivals like a dazed ghoul for ten minutes or so, I finally found Callum who immediately commented that he expected me to look a lot worse than I did, which was nice little confidence boost. After that we wandered back to the car park to pay for the ticket. HOWEVER, what soon became apparent was that he didn’t have his wallet on him. Remember when I said to remember earlier that he went straight from his bed to the car. Well, yeah. That’s literally what he did. Literally went from his bed to his car without even picking up his wallet.

NO MATTER. 

I had cash. I could pay. 

But wait, I didn’t have money. At least not English money. Having just come from Washington DC all that lay in the dark grisly recesses of my purse were a few dollars and a euro or two from a previous trip to Lisbon. 

Again, NO MATTER. I had my card. I could pay with that. 

Pretty pissed off by this point I rammed my card into the machine, slammed my four digit pin and then, out of nowhere: CARD DECLINED. 

What in seven hells was going on?! 

I tried again: CARD DECLINED. 

Fuck. 

Then it hit me: my card must have been blocked by my bank. I had used it at the duty-free in Dulles Airport to buy Callum some Lacoste aftershave. (Yes, I did phone my bank in advance to let them know and yes, they did say that would be fine and dandy, but obviously this is MY life we’re talking about and my card got blocked anyway). 

So, here we were. It was 6am at Heathrow Airport, we had no money and Callum’s car appeared to be stuck in the car park until further notice; not to mention that as each half-hour ticked by, our parking bill racked up even more. SO, what were our options? 

a) Beg for money. The downside of this was this I was in my uniform and I didn’t know how well British Airways would take the idea of one of their Cabin Crew begging for money from passengers before they’d even entered the terminal. 

b) Call my mum to bring us money. The downside of this was she wouldn’t be up and hey, I’m an adult. I could deal with this myself. 

c) Wait for a miracle. (Probably the best option). 

But before we even needed to choose an option, it hit me. I could take out some host from British Airways! (For anyone who doesn’t know what host is, it’s basically money you can borrow from your next pay check. It is a life-saver in the Cabin Crew world). 

I left Callum by the pay machine with my cases (one of which had my phone – remember that for later) and legged it back into the terminal. The very place that half an hour before I thought I was rid of! Out-of-breath and still a bit dazed from the tray incident I got to the Host desk and asked to take out £20 because God only knew how much our parking was at this point. (Another important point to remember in this story was this: I had never taken money out of host before). 

Now, every time I had ever walked past the host desk thus far in my Cabin Crew career it had been empty. Never a queue in sight. Not this time! Not when I wanted to use it! One guy was arguing to kingdom come about the exchange rate of South African Rand and the woman in front of me had about £100 in loose change that she wanted to convert to about 10 different currencies. Eventually, and I do mean eventually, I got to the front of the queue and this is more or less how my conversation with the lady at the Host desk went: 

Host lady: Can I help you? 

Me: I’d like to take out £20 in host. 

Host lady: Can I see your ID? 

*hands ID* 

Host lady: Okay, great. What is your four digit pin? 

Me: My fucking what? Come again? 

Host lady: The four digit pin you chose when you joined the company. What is it? 

GOD. DAMN. IT.

It was true, when I first joined BA, I had set up a pin. 

Did I remember what that pin was? 

Did I fuck! 

Fortunately, I am not your everyday average fool because when I plucked these four little digits out of thin air a few months previously, I had the good sense to make a note of it on my phone. 

I reached for my phone…but wait, you guessed it, I had left it with Callum. 

OH SMITE ME LORD. 

So, back to Callum I went to get my phone; then back to the host desk I went with this sacred four-digit code to get my money; then, finally, FINALLY, I had the £20 cash in my hands. Being smacked in the face by those trays felt like an eternity ago and I was beginning to forget it had even happened at all - maybe I should have just driven home all along! 

Right, so back at the pay machine we were. Except this time, we were taking no more shit. We were ready. As expected, the parking had risen since we first put the ticket in but HEY we knew that. I crammed my £20 note into the machine and never before or since have I been so happy to get my ticket back. Now all we had to do was get to the car. Except, this was us, it wasn’t that simple.. 

Me: So, where did you park the car? 

Callum: The second floor…I think 

Me: …you “think”? 

Callum: Maybe the third? 

Me: Which one? 

Callum: I don’t know. 

Both seething, we walked to the second floor and scoured it from top to bottom: it was nowhere to be seen. We tried the third: nope, not there. The fourth: no, not there either. By this point, I’d had enough. I was 50 shades of DONE with lugging my case around every square inch of the car park and I was so sleep-deprived I would have happily just collapsed in an empty parking bay and treated myself to a power nap. 

Sensing the mood, Callum said he would go off and check the other floors for the car. 

It was as I was waiting for him to come back that I thought it would be just our luck if our newly-paid ticket timed out on us and we had to pay extra because it had taken us so damn long to get out of the car park. The thought alone made me want to be sick because this would mean going back to that sodding Host desk. 

NO MATTER. I trusted him. He’d find the car before that happened...I hoped... 

It was at that very moment that I saw something I never thought I’d see: Callum zooming towards me in the passenger seat of a total stranger’s white van.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. What the fuck was going on? Maybe it wasn’t Callum? Maybe my eyes had deceived me? But no, as the white van drew closer and drove past me I saw that it was in fact Callum, sat merrily in the shotgun position of some random’s van! Maybe I’d been hit by that stack of trays harder than I thought! 

A few minutes passed and I was still left standing gormlessly in the car park not really sure of what the hell I had just witnessed. THEN, I saw it: his Vauxhall Corsa toodling towards me.

I was saved. 

It was over. 

I could finally go home to my bed. (That was assuming our ticket was still valid). 

I chucked my case in the boot, got in and immediately asked Callum what in God's name he was doing in that random white van. This is what he said: 

“I was running around the car park looking for that fucking car when this white van pulled up next to me and asked if I needed help. I told the guy that I’d lost my car and he said to get in and he’d help me look. Instead of asking for the model of the car or the color, he asked me for the number plate. He said he had an idetic memory and would see it instantly if he knew the number plate. I had nothing to lose so I got in and we had a chat and looked for the car. Turns out his “idetic memory” was a bit of a scam because he drove straight past my car.”  
I had no words. 

As we approached the ticket barrier, I half expected it to regurgitate our ticket and tell us to pay again, but by some miracle, it didn’t; it worked! We were outta there! 

My overall review of the morning as a whole would be this: a shit sandwich. Cursed from start to finish. If ever there was a sign that things always go tits up for me, it would be this entire anecdote and if you think the day couldn’t have gotten much worse from that point on, you’d be wrong because it was spent sitting in an A&E waiting room and trying to get my bloody debit card unblocked by my bank.

The Holiday From Hell | Part 4

*Originally posted on my blog at http://callumjw.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-holiday-from-hell-part-4.html*

The Boat Trip 

So besides a few minor niggles this nautical day out passed mostly without incident. However, it is VITAL I mention the boat trip for what happened after...you'll see. 

So as I said, the minor niggles, starting form the top: 

1. I'm terrified of boats, the open sea, deep water, etc. etc. so was none too pleased about the prospect of the entire day floating about but agreed to the day long trip to keep Emma happy, but I was shitting the metaphorical brick for the entire duration.

2. We had the poor fortune (a theme you may notice) to be sat next to an arguing couple, not much older than ourselves, that bickered for almost the ENTIRETY of the day. At first I felt sorry for the girl, her boyfriend had been texting some girl on holiday and denied it at first but it all came out yada yada you've no doubt heard it before. This may just be the guy in me talking but by the end of the day I felt sorry for the poor guy, she was an A Class moaning, miserable, whining, ball ache. I don't think I saw her smile, even once they had 'made up'. 

3. I got sun burnt

4. Moments after the below picture was taken I may or may not have pushed Emma off the top of the boat and into the sea without warning, which earned us a little domestic of own. 

5. Moments after disembarking HMS Floating Death both Emma and I were hit by overbearing sea sickness which neither of us realised would come into play later that evening.

The Quad Bike Hire 

Now as I said we had been on the boat an entire day; I was really looking forward to getting back, having a shower and getting a nice relaxing evening at a local restaurant under my ever loosening belt.

EMMA alas decided that the very moment we set foot upon dry land was the perfect opportunity to go and enquire about hiring a quad bike for the next day, something, we had been unable to do the day before because they were all sold out. See The Holiday From Hell | Part 3.

Fine, I decided, if it keeps Emma happy I could wait a little while longer for a shower and my mind was still partially distracted by praising the Lord for getting me back onto firm ground.

What we didn't expect was to be told our hotel (if you can call it that, see The Holiday From Hell | Part 2), a whole twenty minute stroll away from the quad bike hire shop, was considered 'remote' and because of that we could take the quad bike that very night to save us coming back in the morning to collect.

The shop assistant proceeded to look at me and say:

"Now you can use it to go out for dinner tonight!"

Looking back now I realise that it was here that my fate was sealed.

I smiled along and thought NO my first ever experience driving a quad bike will not be tonight in the almost dark on roads I don't know in a foreign country when I am not only exhausted, but sea sick. 

HOWEVER, Emma had decided this was a WONDERFUL idea. So an hour later we set out for a part of Corfu the bastard shop assistant recommended. We donned our best attire for a classy suave evening dreaming we looked something a little like this...

But in reality.....

So the journey to the town (Notos) was a whopping 4.7 miles away and with the sun setting we aimed to get there before dark, an easy task for people as intelligent, mature and prepared as we are. 

The first thing we noticed was that our map, given to us by the quad bike hire shop, was shit. 

The second thing we noticed was that in a lot of European countries you can half work out road signs due to their Latin routes and similar letters. Greek, however was designed by someone who saw the welsh language and decided well that's just too fucking obvious and set a real challenge. 

In short, we were not helped at all by the sparse and incomprehensible road signs. Want to guess how long that 4.7 mile trip took us? 

You're wrong.

It took a little over 2 hours and we didn't even end up where we wanted, we stopped in a random town (which turned out to be the one next door to Notos) after we had both just given in at the first sign of a restaurant that didn't look too awful as extreme hunger had set in, caused mainly by not eating that day, due to the accursed boat trip.

How did it take so long, I hear you ask, well see Exhibit A, the map below, aka Our Route.

The 'X' on the lower left is where we started and the 'X' on the upper slightly right is where we ended up.

As you can see, we took the scenic route. 

So anyway we arrive outside this restaurant, which all in all, looked good. Maybe we would be rewarded for our 2 hour slog through Corfu with a dinner that would mend our souls! 

But first I had to park the Quad in the car park, which according to the sign outside the restaurant was 100 yards down the road. 

I kicked Emma off the back of the bike to order us drinks (which I NEEDED) and get us a table, I'd only be a minute. 

I wasn't a minute.

Half a mile further down the road I finally found the fabled car park and to get into said car park meant driving down a steep dirt slope that wouldn't be out of place on a rally circuit. Eventually, with extreme care, I made it down into the car park, which was essentially a sloped clearing that ended in a sheer cliff drop. This is where I learnt our quad bike had no handbrake and every time I let go of the brake the quad bike would roll backwards toward the cliffs edge at the end of the car park. 

Eventually I realised if I parked the other way (side ways) it wouldn't roll back.

So I set back up towards the restaurant and Emma and what I hoped was an ice cold beer. 

But there wasn't.

There was a Diet Coke, because I was driving.

Now as you can imagine after two hours lost on the back of a quad bike Emma and I were not in the most amicable of moods. Add some severe motion sickness into the mix, awful wait staff and an over priced meal then you have all the ingredients for what you can consider an argument trifle.

Which of course erupted sometime in-between finishing the main and paying the bill. However we both knew that ahead lay the journey home, ahead lay our fate, ahead lay that quad bike. 

Now you may have noticed I haven't said too much about the experience of being on the quad bike and that is because on the way there, despite being lost, it was still good fun to drive and the novelty of it all lasted almost the entire journey. 

There was no such novelty on the way back.

The way back only held doom and despair. 

We walked the half mile to the car park, where it soon became apparent that our Quad bike would not make it back up the slope that led from the car park, the only exit. So I had to get off and run with the quad bike up the hill and combining its full power and my feeble push to get it to the top we made it with the only casualty being some mild sweating and dirty clothes.

Out of frying pan, into the fire.

We set off, oddly optimistic that our previous experience had taught us something, thinking that lightning can't strike twice. Lighting might not be able to, but world ending meteorites sure can.

After 20 minutes we found ourselves rolling into Notos, the town we had originally aimed for, which, annoyingly, was SO much nicer than the place we had just stopped for dinner. But the place was full of people so Emma jumped off to ask a local for directions, she came back beaming, saying:

"Apparently it's easy, just up, down, right, left."

So armed with our directions that sounded eerily similar to a GTA cheat code we set off still riding on our wave of optimism. Firstly we did the up bit, ALOT of up, there was so much going up that our quad bike, which we christened George, could only muster a pathetic speed of 13 kilometre per hour. With that in mind let me paint the scene:

It's 10:30pm at night, the village we are approaching is soundly asleep. Two tourists arrive, one with skin redder than a stop light, both in fancy-ass clothing, both wearing sunglasses at night like some weird homage to the Blues Brothers, revving every last ounce of their quad bike, on their heads they are sporting these god awful helmets AND THEN as if this picture could not get any more perfect, the girl on the back of this quad bike whips out her phone and starts playing music: Justin Bieber's 'Boyfriend' as loud as possible.

It was at this point I realised that if there is a god, he hates me. 

But we pressed on, our four wheeled horseman of the apocalypse carrying us into the night. A night that I should add was:

A) Beginning to get quite chilly and damp, the effects of which are both heightened when travelling at speed on a quad bike.

B) Full of insects that crowded round our dim and frankly useless head lights but found other homes in our eyes and in our mouths.

After an hour, we came back into Notos. Fuck. 

We tried again, beginning to believe that we may actually never see our hotel again. In our desperation we tried something new, we turned off the 'main' roads onto smaller ones. Which took us to places akin to where Ross Kemp would take a film crew, honestly these places where SCARY, smashed up cars sat abandoned in the road, trailer vans at every corner, stray dogs barking, sheer cliffs to oblivion all with no street lighting at all, only our dim yellow head lights to guide us.

In a brand new type of desperation we turned back in search of a main road. We got back to somewhere like civilisation and it soon became apparent that it was my turn to get off and ask locals for directions. I did so and returned to Emma with some good news, apparently we were not far and there was a short cut right ahead of us.

Now I don't know if the guy that gave me the directions was wrong, having a laugh, or just wanted us dead. Because that short cut lead us to a town, and I'm not exaggerating when I say, it was like something out of Will Smiths I Am Legend. It was deserted, pitch black, full of twisting tight roads and steep slopes. Eventually after much faffing and more revving we reached the town 'square' where about twenty locals sat in the dark passing wine bottles from one to the other. We looked at them, they looked at us. It was a horrible, tense moment; after a few seconds one of them waved us through and gingerly we drove past them in silence. Well as much silence as a quad bike carrying two twenty year olds can muster.

We flew from the town like a bat out of hell and thanks to some minor miracle stumbled upon a sign back to Agios Georgios, the town that housed our 'hotel'.

We made it back, two and a half hours after paying the bill. We wanted to get to our regular bar STAT but only a few hundred yards away we stopped and pulled over, to break into pure hysterical laughter. 

To any passer-by it looked like two escapees from the happy farm. 

To us it was like the ending of an epic journey that had been just another highlight of our ongoing awful luck, but for that one joyous moment we had fought Corfu and we had WON! (kind of).

A Busy, Yet Cheap Day in London

OH MY GOD, WE ONLY HAVE FOUR WEEKENDS LEFT IN THE COUNTRY 'TIL WE ARE OFF.

Shit.

Anyway...

Since we are on the home straight now, we decided to allow ourselves a weekend away from saving, worrying about money and planning the trip to have a day out in London. 

As much as we wanted to, we couldn't go all out, throw wads of cash in the air, pop bottles and otherwise, party like it's our birthday - but I guess we've become firm believers in the notion that you don't need money* to have a good time.

*You will need some money. We're not fucking idiots. 

We got a return ticket to Waterloo and decided to walk round the city rather than take the tube. Don't get me wrong, the Underground definitely has a time and a place; i.e when you're in a rush, or it's pissing it down with rain, but when it's August and it's sunny and warm outside I think you'd be a fool not to walk instead!

By the time we got to London it was midday and all that was on my mind, as ever, was food. We walked from London, down South Bank and through Trafalgar Square to get to Covent Garden, where we found a Café Rouge to nip into for lunch. 

Why Café Rouge? Surely there's nicer, more authentic places to eat in Central London?

WELL, LET ME TELL YOU. I have been a complete and utter BATTLEAXE over the past few months with my Tesco Clubcard and have been reaping in those points left right and centre for times like this. Times like when a £5 off coupon gets posted through your letterbox and you think, tight bastards, is that it?! But then you realise that you can 'exchange' (ooh) that coupon for 4x its value in restaurant vouchers. 

YES PLEASE. 

So, after an amazing brie baguette and fries, we waddled out having only spent £9 on our bill. VALUE, SON. Would have been totally free if we hadn't had a Fruli beer each, but damn those things are too good and we couldn't resist. 

When we originally planned the day we had hoped to museum hop, but it was SUCH a nice day and to be frank, a day that nice in the UK is a rare sight and absolutely HAS to be snatched up with the jaws of life because before you know it, it'll be gone in the blink of an eye.

Saying that, we did go to one museum, The British Museum. The queue was nearly enough to scare us away, but it quickly went down because the security and bag check consisted of this: walking in a single file line, through a tent and up to Security, who quite simply did not give a fuck and would holla you through without as much as glancing in or even at your bag.

Perfect for us though!

We wandered around for 45 minutes or so and after looking at the Egyptian exhibits, we decided it was time to head back out and enjoy the weather.

What happened next was a LONG ASS walk to Regent's Park. On paper it looked quite near, but in reality, when you don't know where you're going and you end up taking the longest possible route, it's a bit of a beast. 

Instead of paying 6x the price for drinks in a pub or bar - something we both LOVVVVEEEE to do, but, ya know, we have injections and shit to pay for - we bought some ciders from Sainsbury's and took them to the park with us like proper pikeys. 

The only issue was we didn't have a bottle opener. 

Luckily, Callum managed to mould his nan's keyring* into a makeshift bottle opener. YAY! It then snapped and broke. Fab.

*Why do we have his nan's keys? Well, to cut a long story, my little Ford KA blew up the other week (exactly what you DON'T want to happen before a six month trip, but hey) and we are now proud renters of Callum's nan's ultra sassy, ultra teal Mum-mobile: the Ford Fusion.

Swag.

Anyway... after basking in the sun for a while, I mentioned the fact I wished we had a Hamley's milkshake (in other words, the best milkshakes in the world). A sentence I soon lived to regret. Why? Because Callum is a massive child who loves toyshops and milkshakes and will stop and nothing to get to both.

So off we went again.

After half an hour or so we finally arrived at Hamley's and made our way to the top floor, where we locked eyes on our Holy Grail, The Milkshake Counter. 

I'm not lying when I say these milkshakes are THE SHIT. They encompass everything good in life and blend it into a cup of dreams: Mr Whippy style ice-cream, chocolate, sugar, calories, artery-clogging goodness. They have it all. It was definitely worth the walk. PLUS, I got to see their Game of Thrones and Harry Potter toys (pffft calling them toys is a bit of an insult tbh) and I died and went to nerd heaven. 

After all that excitement, it was about 6 o'clock and our legs had HAD IT from all the walking. Again when we had planned the day we were all like, oooh maybe we'll stay all day and get the last train home, but LOL, no, we're not cut out for that level of spontaneity. 

It was such a lovely day and it just goes to show, you don't have to spend massive amounts of money to have a great time in the Capital. (Unless of course you want to buy the mini Iron Throne replica in Hamley's which is gonna set you back a cool £1.something grand...who would almost do such a thing...)

Cost breakdown

- Train ticket to London Waterloo - £10 each
- Lunch and beers at Café Rouge - £4.50 each (No, thank YOU, Tesco)
- 4x ciders from Sainsbury's - £3.20 each
- Milkshake from Hamley's - £3.60 each

Total = £21.30 each