How To Holiday Like A Celebrity

For most people in the UK, today is that first Monday in September that means back to school. Even David Cameron has finally come returned from his holidays and is back to running the country.

I do love a bit of people-watching, and have always found ports and airports to be useful for chance glimpses of those perhaps considered "celebrities" by some. In the past, Heston Blumenthal has overtaken me at the top of a ski slope, and on another occasion, Robbie Coltrane has lunched in the same mountainside restaurant as our party. In my previous life as a relatively regular visitor to Heathrow airport, I've come across people as random as Ruby Wax, Vivienne Westwood and "some bloke who used to be in Eastenders". With the exception of Ms Westwood, who appeared to have luggage enough for a football team (understandable, I guess) and several members of an "entourage", most of these famous types were going about their business much the same as most other people.

The ferry on the way back from Spain also happened to be one being frequented by British comedian and TV presenter Rowland Rivron, who, according to Wikipedia is a keen caravanner together with his wife Monica (author of the "caravan cookbook"). I confess I was not previously privy to this information about Mr Rivron's holiday preferences, so I was a little surprised to see his ageing Volvo pulling a caravan as we left the ferry at Portsmouth.

Again, on the boat, on the couple of occasions that I observed him, he appeared to go about his business like - gasp - any normal person.(With the exception of when I hissed loudly at my husband "THAT'S ROWLAND RIVRON" in earshot of what I realised later was his wife. Oops.)

It made me smile, therefore, when I came back to the UK to see this tweet from British TV news presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy:

Get up on a Sunday morning to have breakfast in the square to find David Cameron is also in Pollenca
— Krishnan Guru-Murthy (@krishgm) August 19, 2012

Because of course, as with anything in life there is a hierarchy to celebrity and, by default to their holiday choices. Rowland Rivron had the benefit of looking and dressing like a slightly older version of my husband - a kind of everyman, if you will. Contrast this with how somebody much more in public life like a Prime Minister, or even the Beckhams, must have to holiday, and it strikes me that there is a fine balance between fame and fortune when it comes to choosing your holiday destination.

With incredible wealth comes the choice to holiday in the most luxurious destinations in the world...and yet you also find yourself ironically unable to venture much beyond the four walls of your accommodation for most of the time without being either photographed, mobbed, or being permanently accompanied by security staff. Yes, you may be staying in five-star hotels, on luxury yachts, or in your own personal holiday villa, but you can't just take your kids to the beach, see the sights or eat at the local restaurant without a great deal of inconvenience. At least our holiday plans aren't published all over the newspapers, with handy mock-ups of what our holiday snaps might look like:

Source

I think, on balance, I'd rather be Rowland Rivron in his caravan.

Carfest

I'm strictly a "Today" programme kind of gal first thing in the morning. It's a habit that I've inherited from my parents - Radio 4 in the kitchen. I find there's nothing more likely to wake me up properly (other than a decent cup of coffee) than huffing along with John Humphries et al to the latest guff some politician is making up.

I therefore hadn't heard of Carfest, the festival thought up by Chris Evans in aid of Children In Need, until a friend mentioned it to me. The idea, apparently, was simple - a festival for families, combining his favourite things; cars, food and music. It appealed immediately - my husband is a car fan, I like food, and who doesn't like music? As it also meant giving the newly purchased tent another outing, it seemed like a good idea all round.

So, one April morning saw my friend and myself simultaneously on the phone to each other and waiting for the ticket website to go online, and we managed to garner a much-sought after weekend camping pass for the two families.

Last Friday, therefore, we ventured into deepest Hampshire, queued with several thousand others, and jostled for space to pitch our tents. It turned out to be a weekend of many firsts, not only the first festival I had been to since Glastonbury in (eek) 1995(!), but also the first festival for my children, and I think it was probably the perfect introduction for them - not too large for it to all be a bit overwhelming, but also plenty of entertainment (best bit? "The dancing diggers", apparently). Other firsts included my first experience of a "shewee" - something which impressed my daughters so much I don't think they will ever want to go to the loo sitting down again!

It was all a bit more civilised than I remembered my last festival experience to be - the atmosphere was lovely and friendly, the food was varied and extremely delicious, and you knew you were at a middle-class festival when Ocado were delivering to site. Between our party of seven, we managed to sample burgers, sausages, noodles, paella, burritos, smoothies, whitebait and pancakes, and make our own buffalo milk ice cream. It's also fair to say that the "Best of British" tent full of small food producers giving out samples also got a good going over.

We danced to "Rockaoke", this guy here, The Bootleg Beatles, Razorlight, Texas, and many more. We got soaked on Saturday and fried on Sunday, and I think my eldest daughter won prize for most authentic festival "look" with her shorts, fleece, wellies and sunglasses combo. All in all, however, I think I knew the first family festival was a success when we got in the car to go home and my youngest daughter burst into tears because she didn't want to leave...

How To Holiday Like A Spaniard

The Tin family have been off on their jollydays, and we've all come back rested, refreshed, and raring to go again with life. We took the ferry to Santander in Northern Spain, and hired a little cottage around forty-five minutes up the coast near the resort of San Vicente de la Barquera and had a lovely time. Definitely highly recommended! Two weeks on the Spanish "green coast" relatively little frequented by foreign tourists  (a sprinkling of French, some fellow Brits, and the ubiquitous Dutch - seriously, how do they get everywhere in Europe by car?!) meant that I was able to observe the native Spaniards enjoying their R&R. Here, then, is my advice should you want to try and emulate them:

1) The obvious one - if you really want to holiday like a true Spaniard, stay in Spain. After all - why would you go anywhere else when you have fabulous weather, beautiful countryside, a myriad of activities, great food AND people that speak (little other than) your language? It's a no-brainer, right? If you are wise, you will flock to the Northern coasts of Asturias and Cantabria where the heatwave engulfing Spain brings the temperatures to a pleasant 30 degrees C, rather than those of the mid-40s affecting the rest of the country.

"Our" beach nr Pechon, Cantabria

2) Whatever you do, take a lunch break at around 2pm. This way you leave all car parks, tourist attractions and beaches free for the crazy foreign tourists who don't know about decent lunch breaks and siestas. Instead, clog up all the terraces of local restaurants eating all manner of delicious seafood and smoking wildly to your heart's content.

3) Be ridiculously bronzed on the beach. Easy! - you're Spanish - even at your pastiest you still resemble a delicate biscuit colour that an average Northern European can only hope to emulate after slathering themselves in fake tan for the entire two weeks (No, not me, noooo - my tan is ENTIRELY natural. Ahem.) After all, Pastiest Person on the Beach(TM) is always guaranteed to be a rare foreigner anyway.

Oh, and 3a) Go topless ONLY if you are very young and very skinny, or old enough not to care what people think. (*shudder*)

4) Should you fail at 3), for whatever reason, demonstrate to everyone that this is because you are a Very Important Executive that spends a lot of their time in an office doing Very Important Things, and has no time for silly beach games, by pacing the sand non-stop with a mobile phone glued to your ear and a furrowed brow, gesticulating wildly with your spare hand.

5) Choose your tourist attractions wisely. Ignore the major internationally known hotspots of the Northern coast like the Guggenheim in Bilbao. It is full of French tourists from across the border, on whom the fantastic David Hockney paintings are somewhat lost, as demonstrated by the whispers of "bof, je connais pas, hein", accompanied by trademark Gallic shrugging.
Instead, flock to the picturesque town of Comillas, where you will throng like over-enthusiastic paparazzi to one of Antoni Gaudi's earliest works, and one of the few outside Catalonia, El Capricho.

6) If beaches are not your thing, make those unfit types listed in 4) green with envy by nonchalantly climbing the foothills of the Picos de Europa mountain range either on foot or by mountain bike without so much as breaking a sweat in 30 degree heat. Kudos.

7) Refuse to speak anything other than Spanish, thus making even vaguely linguistically-minded foreign types, one of whose seven languages does NOT happen to be Spanish, feel painfully inadequate, uncultured, and rushing for the Michel Thomas at the first opportunity. *Sigh*

8) If all of the above fail, just ignore them and have a ruddy marvellous time.

School Summer Holiday Thoughts

Ah, the long, lazy summer holidays...right?

Wrong.

As a working parent there's really no such thing. No lie-ins, no lazy days in the garden, no end to the "school run" and the rush to work (only this time it's the "holiday club run"). It can be hard sometimes not to feel a pang of jealousy when you are rushing to get children ready for childcare with half an eye on Twitter, when you read about others sipping coffee in a peaceful house. (This of course assumes you are lucky enough to have few childcare issues over the holidays - not necessarily always a given!)

By around day three, however, and mentions of "boredom", grumbles about the cost of activities, wailing at ruined houses start to appear, tales of kids eating into adult time by staying up late... By the middle of that blissful six-week period, when the "MY KIDS ARE DRIVING ME CRAZY, WHEN ARE THEY GOING BACK TO SCHOOL" desperation kicks in, I am reminded that it's not easy for anyone - no matter how much greener the grass sometimes looks like from the other side. 

Then there's the fact that, without fail, one of my family can be guaranteed to come down with some kind of illness during a school holiday. It's as though the lack of routine is too much for the body to cope with, so it forces a relaxation. Last weekend it was me, and at the time of writing it appears to have affected daughter number 2. There's nothing like spending a sunny day in bed to really feel like you are wasting precious "leisure" time!

All of that, however, doesn't seem to matter at the moment, for when the sun shines the mood is instantly lifted. So - whatever you're doing - I hope you have a lovely summer!

Hair Dilemmas

Hair is weird, isn't it? Women spend forever fussing over it. If it's not removing excess body hair (a whole separate subject in its own right), it's fiddling with the stuff on our heads.
My own hair has been on my mind a lot lately as I know it's time for another visit to the hairdresser. I know this, because I have started tying my hair back a lot because it just doesn't quite sit right any more. Luckily I know a trip to my trusty salon will sort me out pretty quickly. (I've perfected the art of the messy bun by now, and although I'd love to attempt a thick, luscious ponytail as modelled by Victoria Beckham et al, somehow it just looks like a scraggy 5 year old's... which does make me wonder - how old is too old for a ponytail?) 

I have a good relationship with my hairdresser - I've been going to the same salon for longer than I care to remember, and, with the exception of her two maternity leaves, the same stylist has chopped my locks for that time (including wedding hair, the lot). It's fair to say I trust her judgement and she knows the kind of thing that would work with my "lifestyle", my poker straight tresses, face shape, blah, blah.

It's been a while since my last visit, and I probably shouldn't have left it as long as I have. It's been even longer since I last had the colour tended to. Much as it might shock some of you to learn (ahem), while I would class myself as a "natural blonde" for want of any other definition, the shade I have sported for probably the last ten years is a tad lighter than what nature blessed me with. I have to look back at old pictures to remind myself that I actually quite like my natural colour. Unfortunately for it, most of the time now I merely think of it as "roots" when the blonde highlights haven't been touched up.

All those chemicals can't be good for it, however, and I think it might be time to give my hair a bit of a rest from all those poxygloxylycins. The thing that has occurred to me, however, is what happens if the colour underneath has changed after all these years? What if I'm - horror of horrors - going grey?! Of course there is really only one way to find out, and luckily for women it's more socially acceptable to go back to dying hair...

Maybe I should try a blonde afro?