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We're doing quite a lot of jaunts this summer holiday and the first of them is a trip to the Isle of Wight so that Catie and me can take part in the Comedy Festival. But we're making it a short family holiday too and because it's frowned on to leave an 8 year old and a 5 year old home alone, we brought the little pricks with us.
It was quite an arduous journey. The trip to Portsmouth was supposed to take two hours, but factoring in traffic jams and wee breaks I decide to leave a sarcastic three hours twenty minutes before our boarding time. We didn't stop for a wee but there was a lot of traffic. We rolled into the ferry port at exactly the time we were asked to arrive. So we were lucky that bladders old and new held for four hours (by the time we were on the boat).
We played music on the road, taking it in turns to pick a song. Ernie loves the new World Cup song for the Lionesses (which to quote Stewart Lee when he first heard "it's coming home" sounds like the fucking Wombles - I should say that I love the Wombles. First record I ever bought and still the best) and Phoebe wanted to listen to School's Out For Summer every time her turn came up. It's a great song. Especially when it's summer and school is out. It's very rock and roll and anti-education, with school being blown to pieces and all that, so I was surprised to discover that the thing that first annoys the singer is pencils. The thing that he is most delighted to be rid of is pencils. That's the first thing that comes to mind. Not even because it has to rhyme with something. He was just happy to finally say goodbye to fucking pencils.
Out of all the things in school surely the most innocuous is pencils. It wouldn't be the thing that I was most looking forward to getting rid of. Teachers, school uniform, trigonometry, slide rules, compasses (both types), school dinners, corporal punishment : there's a million things I'd be glad to see the back of before pencils. It makes the singer sound like a fucking idiot. Really, you want to blow the school to pieces cos it's full of pencils do you, you fucking twat.
Also pencils are everywhere. The chances of getting through the summer without seeing a pencil was pretty slim. You can use them for non-learning purposes too. They're great. Don't give up on pencils just because they're one of the things in school. Toilets are also in school - are you going to refuse to use a toilet because of the association?
Anyway, we got across the sea and finally to our Air B n B which is extremely nice and in a great location. We popped down to the seaside and had some fish and chips. We were all tired out and Ernie in particular was being a bit difficult - but he'd been cooped up in a car all day (though he had loved being out on the sea like a pirate).
But a holiday wouldn't be a holiday if it wasn't a total pain in the arse to get to.
