Hormonal Teenager(s)

One day into the holiday and a flood of tears from Teenager after calling Mini-me (her ...ahem...boyfriend from school). She had suggested that they ....ahem....enjoy their holidays without being tied in eternal love to each other. In other words she wanted a break. At this point she ran out of credit and mis-read that as him slamming the phone down. A quick call from GMD's phone and all was cleared up. The very next day at the pool there were two boys. The eldest was 14, the youngest 11. Matching Teenager and Baby's ages very nicely (they're 13 and 10 respectively). GMD turns to me and say "Jack, do you think our girls are flirting with those boys?". I lifted my head from the book I was reading, observed for a minute and replied in the affirmative. Apparently teenager had inadvertently used a chat up line of "is your little brother as annoying as my little sister?" which isn't half bad is it?

And so began holiday romance #1 for Teenager. The eldest boy M was very polite but not patronisingly so, the youngest B was cheeky but endearingly so. Both will be (are already?) lookers. They're parents W & S were....well...bloody nice actually and so from the fledgling romance a friendship was borne for GMD and me. However one day later new neighbours moved in and with them came their 14 year old - R. R was a bit more rough and ready, a smoker, cheeky, rebellious. And fucking tall. He was a bit of rough. And she patently quite liked it. Within 2 days he had asked Teenager for a drink down the bar, to which confusingly she replied "Don't know", giggled, blushed and ran away. I tried to explain that a straight yes or no is usually better for both parties, but in all honesty it was the FIRST time she had been asked out like that. A day later and he presented her with a belly button ring (yes she is pierced, and yes I tried to object, and yes I was overruled). Way to go R! You don't buy that sort of thing if you haven't got something...ahem..on your mind. And so began (concurrent) holiday romance 2. And neither kid seemed to mind the other. Over the holiday, she made friends with Mikael, James and another kid whose name I have forgotten. Plus a few other girls around the same age. She had become part of the obligatory Teenage Holiday Gang.

But R and M were the boys that caused the giggles, the blushing, the showing off. They were the ones for which she would preen herself for every night for what seemed like bloody hours (hair, makeup, clothes). Each day by the pool she would read her book and complain that the pool was too cold as Baby pleaded for the return of her old playmate. Every day I became Baby's playmate until B turned up. But when M walked in the pool, or R, the book would be dropped, the giggling would start, the play acting began, the faux pushing into the pool became prevalent, the Princess Di gazes appeared, and the water was suddenly warm. It was fascinating to see this awareness scenario played out as it is a time I remember well.

It's also my worst fucking nightmare because I remember what drove me. Girls were interesting, alien, sexy. They had things I wanted to see, touch, feel. Hormones drove me, they also drove the girls. It was time for trying and failing, for persevering for every little advance you could make. They were a challenge to overcome. They became an obsession. And that is what I face from now on, boys knocking at the door. Boys calling on the phone. Boys hanging around in MY house. Boys wanting my daughter. Boys howling at my door in their permanent "season" trying to get to my precious daughters.

All to be doubled up in a few years when Baby transforms into Teenager V2.

As John McLean (Bruce Willis character in Die Hard) would say.

Yippee-kye-ay Motherfucker.

Or as I would say

Whoopee-fucking -doo

Later, Grocerjack.

Left….no right….no left……..errrrr…….oh…….whatever!

I love women. I love their different shapes, their different sizes, their smells, their looks, their reasoning, and their generally lower levels of aggression. I agree with the sentiment that if they held more power in governments across the world then there would be fewer wars and less violence. In every sense I believe women are more or less equal to men. Intellectually they are the same if not more talented than men. Physically they may be restricted in terms of brute strength in such sports as football (women’s football is skill and guile based as opposed to pace and brute strength) or rugby, but in other sports such as golf I see no reason why women should not be able to compete equally. I rejoice that in the UK at least they earn what I do for doing the same job, even if the reality is that this wage parity is more theoretical than actual. Their beauty can illuminate a room, and there is no doubt that today’s woman is far more powerful and emancipated than ever before.

But in at least one area they cannot compete with men. I know I will undoubtedly incur the wrath of many women who read this site, those I know and those I don’t. But it has to be said.

They cannot read maps. They have no sense of spatial or directional awareness. Never let a woman plan a journey. It will only ever lead to tears and shouting.

Tears from her, shouting from you.

For years GMD has lauded me with proud tales of how as a child she would read the maps for The Grand Master when they went on holidays or trips. I was chuffed at this. How handy would this be? A partner who can navigate whilst you concentrate on being Captain Grocerjack, proudly driving your passengers to their holiday destination. Delivering them safely and more or less on time, with stunning entertainment from my home made compilation CD’s, or the alternative of in-drive MP3 players or portable DVD player. Someone to forewarn you of imminent junctions, road changes, road works and diversions in advance.

What I never asked was whether she ever guided The Grand master successfully. A cursory check, but an important one that I missed. The Grand Master doesn’t like to drive long distances to places he doesn’t know, and detests driving abroad. I now know why. He’s scared of where he’ll end up.

Every year I trust her, and every year we have at least one row caused by a mis-reading of the map, or the mis-reading of signposts. This year it took until the 3 days before the end of the holiday, but as sure as eggs is eggs it happened. We had decided to drive to another camp-site in order to view their selection of mobile homes (they’re not Caravans right!). This site was about 75 miles away along the A9 towards, but NOT IN Montpellier. GMD had a local map leading to the site and the larger map of France. The night before I suggested we plan the route…not necessary said she, she’d sort it out in the car. I believed her.

As we enter the city of Montpellier having endured an hours delay on the A9 due to what appeared to be French tree trimmers blocking two lanes I started to wonder. My bafflement was complete when GMD commented “I can’t find the N312 or the D137 on the big map” ….”come to think of it…why haven’t we even seen a sign?” . I pulled over and examined the map. GMD pointed out where she was looking on the big map. “it doesn’t seem to correlate” she said. 10 seconds was all it took for me to determine the issue. She was correlating the local map to a point on the big map that was two inches further east than the place we wanted to be. That’s about 50 miles in real money on the real map that is the French countryside. Move two inches west on the Map back to Beziers and….wait what’s this….fuck me it’s the destination we require! I said this in the most diplomatic and loving husband way I could think of which means it probably came out as “ You stupid fucking cow, we’re meant to be here, not here” accompanied by jabbing fingers into the maps. I turned the car round and we headed back. Tension was now steadily mounting and I exaggerated every gear change whilst apologising to Captain Grocerjacks passengers, the kids. I figured about an hour back to where we should be but hen for some bizarre reason I accepted GMD’s recommendation that we bypass the A9 and use the N112m (their equivalent to an A road), despite knowing the A9 would be clear going back west.

We hit traffic at Frontignan, and then sat for an hour in Sete, and a further 30 minutes to drive along Marseillan Plage ( about 8 miles of endless sandy beach, no shops, no promenade and hundreds of Dutch and French camper vans parked next to it, with awnings out and full table chair sets set out for lunch). Yes, we had left at 7:45 and it was now midday and France was having its lunch. Another wrong turn took us up the N312 in the opposite direction to Vias, where the camp-site holiday parc is located. Finally, after another huffed and puffed gear change, followed by some unnecessary anger motivated acceleration inclusive of passenger apology, she broke. She flung the map down, tears streamed out, and a volley of stuff like “I don’t know where we are, you fucking find the way……etc etc”. An aggressive u-turn and associated hand signals to other drivers followed. I shouted back, more tears.

And then finally, the admission. The moment she then said she knew she’d cocked up. She’d known back at Montpellier. Then silence as we slowly but surely negotiated the local instructions to arrive at the camp-site holiday parc at 12:30. 4 hours, 45 minutes to do 75 miles. Put this into context. The journey back took 1 hour and 15 minutes exactly.

How the hell we were ever in the mood to then actually commit to buying a caravan holiday home I will never know. From now on all journey planning is down to me, and she will do any tactical stuff en route if diversions are in place.

Please, for your own sake, and your sanity, don’t let your wife/girlfriend/daughter read your map. It’ll just end in tears.

Later, Captain GrocerJack

Samedi Noir

Thats what the French call it.

Shit Sandwich is what I would call it, and I took the biggest bite.

The first weekend of August in France is known as Samedi Noir (Black Saturday). This is the weekend that any part of France not working in a bar, restaurant, on a beach, in a club or in any part of the "tourist" industry packs their bags, loads up the car, or more often than not the bloody great camper van and heads en masse to the South of the country. In all fairness, if the climatic difference was so pronounced in the UK I could understand us doing a similar thing, however NOT on the same fucking day. My schedule was simple, get to Le Havre about 13:30, drive to Limoges about 350 miles away, using peage where possible, average about 60/70 miles per hour and get to the stopover hotel for around 8 in the evening. I'd even got a route that avoided skirting Paris.

However the route then took me through French village after French village during their Friday evening rush hour, so any potential gain by avoiding Paris was lost by being stuck in local traffic for local people. It still amazes me how driving through these places you don't see any French people. They're like ghost towns. The suburban French equivalent of the Marie Celeste.

The we hit the A10 heading south. Relief surged through me for about 5 minutes until we hit the ......traffic. The first tranche of the people heading to the south was already out. In the end we got to the hotel at 23:00, a miscalculation of around 3 hours on my part. Too late for dinner, so we feasted on service station rolls instead. I'll give them their due, they're not bad and they are cheaper by some distance than our service station bread based snack foods.

The next day we left at 10 in the morning and I hit the gas, still oblivious to the time of year. I had estimated arrival at around 4pm at the camp site, including a supermarket stop for food etc for the mobile home.

Yeah right.

At around 2pm I joked with Baby that she might not get a swim as we might be too late. We had made good time and the fuel consumption was around 57mpg, and according to the computer I was around 150 miles from an empty tank. Then we hit the A9, the main east-west road across the bottom of France. And we stopped. And we crawled. And crawled. And stopped some more. The computer (hereinafter known as HAL, in tribute to the finest big screen computer ever) then decided to tell me we had 75 miles left to an empty tank as it re-calibrated in the 35 degrees of heat and the snails pace (an insult to snails in fact). 75 miles of range lost in a second as HAL decided to play its mind games. But hope was in sight at the next service station. Fine, we would be late, but I could at least fill the car up.

Wrong. So very wrong.

In this service station from hell, there was one diesel pump open. One hose, feeding both sides of the pump. And a delta shape of lorries, vans, camper vans and cars all pushing towards it in a complete free for all. On top of that there was one cashier dealing with each transaction and only releasing the pump when the previous customer had paid in full. In all about 75 vehicles all pushing to the singularity of the diesel pump. One thing was for sure, this pump would not be working by the time I got there. I just knew they were on the verge of running out and being part of any ensuing riot was not part of the plan. Why else would the other 6 pumps be closed, and the 2 truck specific ones unless they knew what was about to happen?

It took an hour to extricate my car from the delta crowd. And no, I was no closer to the oasis of Diesel promised by the singularity pump. We left the station, tempers fraying, tension rising and got back onto the A9. HAL now said we had 50 miles left to empty tank. I knew we had around 45 miles to go. Diesel burning away with progress being made at a particluarly fat and lazy snails pace. The car's life blood was draining away bit by bit. 4 lanes of Highway Hell. The CD blurted out Chris Rea's "Road to Hell". I skipped it forward, not needing to be reminded that running out of diesel on a packed foreign motorway would not be good. How would the recovery people get anywhere close? And being a diesel you just can't refill it from empty. It would be expensive, embarassing, frightening for the kids, bloody inconvenient and most of all fucking stupid. Then I saw the sign "Sortie 41 - 20km". We needed to be at Sortie 42 but I figured that I could get off here, hopefully fill up in Perpignan centre and then drive the back routes to Argeles.

20km, thats all.
20km, doesn't seem far.

But when you're running out of fuel, the beads of sweat falling despite the aircon, the worried looks and furrowed brows of GMD and myself barely masking our faux nonchalance to the kids, believe me 20km is the same distance as it is to the Moon. HAL now said 15 miles left to empty tank. How I prayed it was wrong. How I despised my trusting this silicon chip fuel measurement device. If it had a voice, it would have been saying "I'm Sorry Jack, that is not possible" in it's gently threatening manner. At this point I started to question my policy of seeing just what the range on the car was from full with the whole family dependent on it.

I tried cheating via the hard shoulder but a French trucker, no friend of humanity and compassion stopped me dead in my tracks by blocking me. If i had run out there and then, I'd be in jail now for the murder of a french trucker with my bare hands. Finally after 2 hours, yes two hours to do the 20km we made it to Perpignan. Into the Carrefour supermarket station d'essence only to find out the card machines would not work. Fuming I reversed back through the queue for fuel and switched to the cashier lane. They don't like it up 'em the French! Finally, just like when you release the longest piss in the world, the one you've been holding onto for the whole day, the relief as the diesel flooded into the car was met with a longing sigh. 70 litres it took. 70 whole litres.

It's capacity?

70 fucking litres. I could have kissed the car with tongues for getting us that far. We arrived on camp at 7:30 pm with me shaking visibly under the very stress this holiday was supposed to be immune to. 17 and a half fucking hours to do what took around 10 last time in total. Never again will I fall into that trap.

Amazing how 7 pints of Amstel and a bottle of Red soon put paid to the stress.

Beware Samedi Noir.

Later, Grocerjack

Return of The Jack

Christ what a piss poor title, but it just appealed at the time. Anyway, after my 3 week plus sojourn to the South of France, I'm back, refreshed and rejuvenated.

Or so you'd think.

Somehow, when driving home on Friday the mood went from one of "great holiday, lovely break" to "shit, back to the daily drudgery of normal life". And that feeling grew greater over the weekend as I realised that once again I would see my family in the evenings only and at weekends, instead of every day. The time spent with Teenager and Baby has been most precious and enjoyable of all. It's almost like I got to know them all over again and each day I was left smiling like a demented Bonnie Langford at the sheer joy of being near them and sharing their fun.

So, the mood is down, but undoubtedly will improve as time goes on. Things to tell you about will follow as and when time allows but some headlines

1.) Why driving down on the first weekend of August is not a good thing to do in France
2.) Why women should not try and read maps
3.) Teenager experiencing being hunted by other boys, and ...errrr.....loving it
4.) Buying a mobile home
5.) Crap books
6.) Baby overcoming her fear of the Sea
7.) Dutch/German/French camper van population explosion
8.) Near forest fire, and how they start
9.) Jailbait (a warning for other members of the GoGB)

and more as I recall it ...........

Later, GrocerJack