Saturday, December 20, 2008

A winter holiday, II



Parking alongside all the other rusty old cars the girl and her husband stepped out into the darkness. She stood anxiously by their trusty jalopy which despite the odds had got them there safely, breathing the crispy woodland air deeply and stretching back over the roof of the car to watch the stars, trying to rememberthe last time she had seen any. Meanwhile he donned the head torch and ventured down the track looking for signs of their hosts. Too soon, for the girl had not sufficiently cleansed her motorway lungs with the night air, two little lights came bobbing up the path, one of them was her husband and the other was her new cousin-in-law, wielding a wheelbarrow.

On a hillside, surrounded by trees, reached down a track traversed by a fleet of wheelbarrows full of bunnies and bags and banana skins, the air filled with omnipresent moisture and the sweet chugga chugga of half a dozen petrol powered generators, the house sat; unassuming, almost hidden, a woodcutter's cabin straight from little red riding hood. With the modern wood dweller's addition of solar panels, surfboard and that pesky generator. Yes, you heard me right – surfboard. For but five minutes though the ancient, protected, native woodland lay a bay with the steepest cliffs, the cleanest sand and the tallest waves. Not to mention rock pools full of squidgy pink anemones and feisty little hermit crabs.

Five minutes in the other direction lay a town with a silly name, excellent muffins and unfriendly locals. The town cracked the girl up, not simply because it was named after a large pair of boobs in the harbour but because of its 120 shops all but around 5 were independent and the girl hadn't seen a town without a Starbucks for many years, nor a town with such an improbable number of stores selling scented candles, decorative door stops and ornamental dogs. There was also the fact that the residents of Boobs seemed to have an average age of 97 and were ridiculously unfriendly. Obviously living here would drive a girl to desperation but the predicable foulness of those that she smiled at made her laugh for now. Of course the sign posts helped too. Peppered with words entirely devoid of vowels, the girl wondered how the hwll one was supposed to speak Welsh and her dyslexic husband thwnkwd thw lwrd that he wasn't born into a country with a language so cruel to those with literary impairments. It didn't matter what they did or where they ventured, for the girl was filled with the excitement that only a holiday can bring. That feeling of endless possibilities, of everywhere a new experience, of being somewhere foreign!

5 comments:

  1. My goodness, you write beautifully.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oooh I am loving your winter holiday tale!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ditto P, sounds like your mojo is well and truly back. Hurrah!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I need to go to Wales immediately! Thank you for the story.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm with Cate and P. It sounds like your holiday was exactly what you needed to feel refreshed and inspired to write/appease your adoring fans. ;)

    ReplyDelete

play nice.