My dear reader…..oh sorry, I went all Lady Whistleblower from Bridgerton then. Well hello, how are you? Not seen you for a few years. You’re looking good. Have you done something with your hair?

It’s been a few years since I’ve done a holiday blog. I guess for the past couple of years, the vibe has never felt quite right, but I was asked today about why I stopped doing them, and the honest answer was I didn’t really know. Perhaps things have moved on now, and it’s time to return to writing trivial nonsense about days on holiday, whilst letting burglars know that the house is empty.

In the past couple of years you’ve missed some belters such as the famous five going to the house that Pepe built (which is Spanish slang for basically a really badly built house) which included a pool that was so deep Karen nearly drowned, and the last trip, to Portugal, where we stayed in an amazing villa which we nicknamed the Big Brother house, because the way it opened into the garden, it just had that Big Brother vibe. It was also occupied by complete narcissistic idiots, but there were no cameras there to see what we were up to. The only downside was that it was in Portugal. (I’m kidding, we love you Portugal…but can you become a bit more Spanish please?)

Then there was mine and Karen‘s Benelux holiday, which saw us leaning into middle age and visiting the most boring places in Europe, starting with Rotterdam then doing Brussels, Luxembourg, Koblenz, Dusseldorf and Utrecht. All done on the train. Just fetch me my anorak right now.

We have come to Spain to celebrate a significant birthday of Rachel‘s. I am too much of a gentleman to say how old she is, but it’s the national speed limit, not on a motorway or dual carriageway. We are staying in a villa to the north west of Barcelona for two weeks, and on the second week we are being joined by Rachel and Tibu’s two boys and partners. I’ll get onto the actual villa on another occasion, there’s a lot to write about, because there’s a lot of villa!

Unlike most holidays, we were not flying at the crack of dawn, but had a very civilised flight at 10:15. The journey to the airport was uneventful and we checked in with no problems, except for the fact that the luggage belt at Manchester airport kept sticking and so we had to queue longer than we normally would have to. We fast-tracked security (well having 2 nearly pensioners in the party, it makes life easier for them). Now I’m not a great fan of going through Security and the hassle of packing and unpacking and dressing and undressing in public, but I really thought I had it sussed out this time.

I had packed all my electronic items into one of those clever packing cubes so when I got to the sushi conveyor belt of grey trays I swiftly took my iPad and laptop and bag of electronics out of my bag, and nonchalantly placed them into the tray while simultaneously whipping off my belt and watch. The security guard was quite insistent on checking that I didn’t have any liquids. I confirmed I had nothing of that nature in my possession at the moment. I then went through the scanner where you stand like you’re doing YMCA, and was waved through. I picked up my tray with my empty bag in it, and began repacking it. However, my bag with the packing cubes had disappeared down the track of despair. You know the one, where your bag goes down the other side of the shoot which means that you have to have it examined.

Now I’m used to this as I often take electronic gadgets in my bag, and they look a bit odd on x-rays. My latest acquisition is a gimbal which looks like some weapon of mass destruction. The lad at Security said to me

“Do you have a little plastic bag”

I said “no, because I don’t have any liquids, in my hand luggage”.

He answered “but you’ve got something in this little bag”.

I said “I don’t think I do”.

He then begins rummaging through and picked out a small birthday present which we have got for Rachel. I then realised I had taken all the presents for Rachel in my hand luggage. I had completely forgotten all about this, and realised that my comedy gift of haemorrhoid creams may be my downfall at Security.

He looked at this exquisitely wrapped gift (Karen wrapped it not me) and asked if “is this a present”.

We said “yes”.

He then looked at the rest of the party who stood close by and said “is this a gift for someone close by?”

I said “yes it’s for the lady that keeps scratching her backside”. (Only kidding Rach) but I did say

“Yes the present was for someone close by”. So he says “I’ll need to open it, but I’ll do it over here”. Anyhow, 10 minutes later it returned absolutely fine, but the exquisite packing now looks like I’ve wrapped the present, not Karen.

For some reason we only booked one of us on speedy boarding, and Rachel had the great pleasure of being the first person to step on the plane. In fact, she was literally the only person on the plane. I think she beat the cabin crew on. As we followed, the head stewardess commented to me and Karen “ooooh, aren’t you coordinated”. Anyone that knows me knows that I’m colourblind, and any coordination on my part was purely by fluke, but apparently yes, we were very coordinated. She was a perfectly charming stewardess, but had that slight manic look in her eyes. The words coming out of her mouth were perfectly pleasant, but the manic look in her eyes gave everything a slightly sinister overtone.

So we arrived at Barcelona and jumped into the passport queue. Since leaving the EU we have a grand scheme for this part of the journey whereby we send Tibu through the Spanish line and the rest of us queue with the non-EU line, and by the time we get through passport control, Tibu has the bags ready for us to move on. However, on this occasion it was slightly different.

Tibu was about to go down the Spanish line, and was getting his passport out. Well, he was trying to get his passport out because he couldn’t find it. There was much, opening and closing of bags, zipping and unzipping of pockets until he concluded it must’ve fallen out on the plane. Then the chap (or use the correct Spanish terminology Chapo) on the passport queue wrote it down and said that he would contact the plane to see where it was. Another minute or so continued, and Tibu was now starting to unpick the seaming of his bag to see if had slipped into lining. Meanwhile the rest of the plane had completely emptied, and was filling the entire passport control area, and we may have been first off the bus, but we were now at the back of the queue.

At that moment Tibu suddenly found his passport, which on the one hand resulted in a great sigh of relief, but on the other hand made us think where on earth did it disappear to! Also, we were now at the end of the queue. However, the passport control Chapo (spot my fluent Spanish there) must’ve taken pity on us because since we were all in the same party, we all got whisked down the Spanish queue. Because it had taken quite some time for Tibu to find his passport, this was now a completely empty aisle, and we literally walked-through ahead of everybody. Once we got over the worry of what we would do if we couldn’t get Tibu into the country, we have realised that this is quite a good ruse for queue jumping.

Then it was on to the villa. More about that next time.