Blog like an Egyptian (part 3)

This is such a different experience of holiday from those of my childhood. Back then, holiday meant a week spent in a meltingly hot mobile home or a threadbare seaside B&B with obligatory perma-grouch landlady who tutted loudly at any sound or sign that you might linger in your room beyond 9am every day.

But those were unusal holidays. More typical were the fortnights spent with Aunty Betty & Uncle Jim or Aunty Nan & Uncle Doug in Birkenhead or Wales respectively. Whatever the final destination, the journey always consisted of hours spent in the back of my grandparents' car, the atmosphere literally growing thicker by the mile as Grandad puffed continually on his untipped Players with the windows hermetically sealed. No seatbelts in the back of the car, your legs fused to the vinyl seats as you restlessly alternated between singing 'travelling songs' and eating pappy sandwiches made with tasteless cheese and cheap white bread.

My Gran, who could not read maps, was invariably in charge of navigation. My Grandad, who could, equally invariably drove faster and faster and puffed more and more furiously the more lost we became. Eventually, when the mischevious gods of 1970s travel had their fun with us, we would miraculously pitch up at our destination. To have survived the journey - let alone to have arrived at the correct place - did indeed seem a miracle, and this habitually became the only topic of conversation among the adults for the next few days. Well, that and the oft repeated surprise at how much my little sister and I had grown - as if this was to somehow fly in the face of the natural order of things for two children.