Is It Really Too Much to Ask? (7 page)

It's funny, isn't it? At home, you make sure your children wear cycling helmets when they go for a bike ride, you wear a high-visibility jacket when you are on a building site and you treat your fuse box like it may explode at any moment.

However, as soon as you go on holiday, you are quite happy to jump off a cliff and eat stuff that you know full well has spent its entire miserable life living on a diet of nothing but sewage.

We heard recently about a man who fell 150ft to his death while parasailing on the Turkish coast.

He looked like a normal sort of bloke who would take care when crossing the road and so on, so why did he suddenly think it was a good idea to be tied to the back of a speedboat, by a young chap, using a sun-ravaged harness, and then hoisted into the heavens?

You may think it was a freak occurrence. But if you type ‘parasailing accident' into Google, you will quickly get the impression that no one has ever returned to earth at anything less than 180mph. Parasailing, it seems, is more dangerous than smearing yourself in Chum and swimming with some crocodiles. But will that knowledge keep me from the big blue yonder when I go on holiday later this month? No.

It gets worse. At home, I make sure my children are kept out of harm's way as much as possible, but on holiday I once watched them being attached to some parasailing equipment by a man who actually had to put down his spliff so he could tie the knots. Well, when I say knots … Then, later, I put my
boy in an inner tube and towed him around the Caribbean at such enormous speeds that he fell out and was knocked unconscious. What was I thinking of? He is my son. He means everything to me. So why did I think it would be ‘fun' to tow him across the sea, at 40mph, on his face?

Then we get to the question of vehicular transport when you're on holiday. At home, you have your car serviced regularly and put through an MOT without complaint. You like to know it's safe and that the brakes work.

But on holiday you are quite happy to rent something from a man called Stavros who makes you sign all sorts of forms you can neither read nor understand before you belch away in a cloud of burning fluids. Or you rent an amusing scooter that you ride much too quickly in shorts and a pair of flip-flops.

Would you let your eleven-year-old daughter ride about at high speed on such a thing? Of course not. It would be foolish, because if she fell off, she'd be peeled. Right, so why do you let her go on a jet ski? I do.

My youngest daughter and I have spent hours seeing how high we can jump over the waves and who can go the fastest while chasing the flying fish. And get this. When we've finished, I let her go snorkelling, knowing full well that the jet skis we've just climbed off are now in the hands of other father-and-daughter speed combos who really won't notice a little girl's head bobbing about in the waves.

The sea is an almost endless source of death and despair. Earlier this year, I plunged into it with a mate and spent several carefree minutes being bashed about by waves that were even taller than me. Then my friend was knocked over with such force that his arm was wrenched completely out of its socket. But did I get out of the water? Again, no. I'd seen what the water could do to a man … and I liked it.

Then we have the banana boat. You let your eldest daughter go in the speedboat while you climb on to the big inflatable penis with the rest of the family and then you sit there, trying to pretend it's exciting while simultaneously pretending not to notice that the rapist who's driving the towboat is playing tonsil hockey with your daughter.

And you think: ‘This is harmless. Boring even.' And it is, but have you ever fallen off a banana? That's not boring at all, because usually, just before you hit the water, you get your wife's knee in your face; so now you're drowning in a sea of stars and bewilderment, wondering if she did it on purpose.

Eating? At home, you wash your vegetables and cook your chicken until it's technically coal. But on holiday? Well, after the swarthy waiter has stopped staring at your daughter's breasts and explained that tonight's special is a ‘local delicacy', you're perfectly happy to put it in your mouth. Despite the fact that it's obviously a wasp that's plainly been cooked in a bucket of blubber, in a bag bearing the label ‘Best before the Boer War'.

Then there's the wine. You like it not because it's cheap or tasty but because the hideous little oik in the apron has told you it's made by his brother. You know he means his brother works at the chemical plant that produces a wine-based substitute as a sideline but you feel that because there's a family connection, it's authentic and earthy, and so you drink lots of it, and then you climb into the deathtrap that has three brakes and wobble home in a blurred tunnel of double vision and stomach cramps.

Of course, you know drink-driving is stupid. Except when you have a sunburnt nose and you've spent the day on the beach. Then it's okay.

What is it then, I wonder, that makes us become so very different as soon as the Ryanair jet touches down in some
dusty sun-baked tourist trap? Why do we suddenly think that it's a good idea to jump off a 100ft cliff into a puddle and let our children climb around on outboard motors that are still running? Why do we take leave of our senses?

Strangely, I think we don't. I think that on holiday we become what we're designed to be: thrill-seeking, fun-filled, risk-taking, happy-go-lucky wonder beings. And that when we go home, to the drudgery of everyday life, we are obliged to become something we're not: frightened and ever so slightly dull.

8 August 2010

There seems to be some talk that the retirement age will soon have to rise to ninety-eight for men and one hundred and fourteen for women. And that since the country can no longer afford to pay a state pension, everyone will be expected to finish their last shift by getting a carriage clock and then jumping into one of the machines at the factory. This is excellent news. And I'm speaking from some experience because on Monday I jacked everything in. I retired.

Top Gear
is a monster and feeding it takes up all the conventional hours – and a few that haven't been invented yet.

And to make matters worse, we decided that while we were filming the last series, it would be a good plan to make a few items for the next one as well.

I'd film all day, then write until the wee small hours, waking up in hotels and spending the first fifteen minutes of the day wondering where the hell I was. Occasionally, I'd get calls from the family saying they were in Mallorca, or Devon, or Cornwall, and having a lovely time, and I was consumed with a jealous rage. Why wasn't I there, too? Kids, you know; they don't grow up twice.

By June I was absolutely knackered. By July I think I was starting to go a bit doolally, and by last week, after three months without a break, I'd had enough. So I made my mind up. I would go home from the last shoot on Sunday and I would retire.

I began to long for it; dream about what I'd do. And what I would do, mostly, is absolutely nothing at all. It became
all-consuming, to the point that I was counting the hours until it was all over – something I hadn't done since double physics with Dr Jones back in 1975.

And then the day came. I woke at seven and went downstairs, without shaving, and I read the papers until about eight, when I had a good stretch and made another cup of coffee. Then I was bored.

I decided to look in the fridge but it was empty, so with absolutely nothing to do, I read the business section of the papers, even though I had no idea what any of it meant. By ten, I was so desperate that I was reading the
Daily Mail
and trying to understand why it had published a picture of Kelly Brook. I failed, so I went to look in the fridge again. Then I looked out of the window.

As the clock ticked round to midday, I thought it would be nice to meet friends for lunch. But they were either away on business or on holiday. My children? That was a no, too. They were all too busy with 600 of their closest personal friends.

I thought then that I'd have a wander round the garden to see if anything needed doing. And I found a tree that needed planting. ‘Excellent,' I thought. ‘That will keep me busy for ages.' And I was right.

It took me a full fifteen minutes to find the gardener and another six to explain what I wanted. Then I had another look in the fridge to see if perhaps there was a cold sausage that I'd missed earlier.

There wasn't, so I went for a walk to see how things were getting along on my farm. I noticed immediately that the barley was ripe, or medium rare, or whatever it is when barley's ready for harvesting. So I rang the farmer and asked him to fire up the combine. Then I went home again and, because no cold chicken had hatched in my fridge, I tuned in to a programme hosted by a man with a bright orange face in which
people tried to sell stuff they'd found in their attic. Apparently, many retired people watch this, and after half an hour most determine that it's better to be dead, so they have a stroke. I didn't want a stroke, so I decided immediately to start a hobby.

But what? I dislike golfers, I am to DIY what Nicholas Witchell is to cage fighting, and I happen to know you can't put a ship in a bottle using the only tool that I can wield with any confidence – a hammer.

Undaunted, though, I came up with the best pastime in the history of man. What you do is find an aerosol tin of spray adhesive, such as you would use to stick posters to a wall. You then lie in wait and when a wasp flies by, you leap out and give it a squirt. Bingo. One minute it's flying; the next it's tumbling silently out of the sky with a confused look on its stupid little face.

I realize that these days you get into terrible trouble if you say you've shot a baboon in the lung but this is different. Because there are not millions of baboons flying around in your garden, ruining any attempt to sit outside and have lunch. Baboons don't sting you for fun, either. And anyway, gluing a wasp together in mid-air requires patience and skill and gives the creature a sporting chance.

Plus, putting a paralysed wasp in the bin while shouting, ‘Ha. Now what are you going to do, you little bastard?' is much less cruel than enticing it into a jam jar and letting it suffocate in a pile of its mates' corpses.

In fact, I shouldn't be surprised if the RSPCA doesn't give me a medal or a certificate of some kind.

The only downside to my new game is that you will miss more often than you hit. And this means a great deal of glue ends up on your furniture and your computer. But trust me. The satisfaction of seeing a wasp suddenly stop flying? It's worth ruining your house for that.

Unfortunately, this is a seasonal pastime and soon the wasps will be gone. Then what? No, really. What do you do to fill your days when you are old and there are no insects and no work? You die, really, because having tried it for a whole day, I've decided that thinking of things to do is far more exhausting than getting up and doing them.

15 August 2010

Every year, I tell my children, with a serious, Dickensian face, that they may have a fun holiday at Easter but in the summer we must go somewhere that will expand their minds. Cambodia. Alaska. Bolivia. These are the places I always have in mind. Unfortunately, I'm always too busy to enforce these rules, which is why, this year, we ended up in Kassiopi in Corfu. And all you can learn there is how not to catch chlamydia.

And so it was on the third day I decided that the kids must put down their vodka shots and their new Italian scooter friends and come with me on an expedition to Albania. We would go to the ruins at Butrint. And we would learn about how the Romans invented mortar.

Sadly, though, the ferry to Albania is almost certainly the slowest moving vessel in history. It does half a mile an hour and I couldn't help noticing it had a funnel made from cardboard and gaffer tape. It was the
Herald of Not So Free Enterprise
.

I therefore decided, in a strident way, that we would charter a boat, and so it was, after a complicated exchange with Greek customs, during which there was much blowing of whistles, we pulled into the Albanian port of Saranda in a 68ft Ferretti motor yacht. There was nowhere to park it, so we tied it to the coastguard's boat, which had sunk – in about 1956 – and went to have our passports checked in what appeared to be a Russian public swimming baths, only with more smoking.

We then hired a guide called Fatso and he was delighted. ‘British. Very good comedy,' he said. ‘Norman Wisdom. Mr Bean. And number one funny show:
Top Gear
. In Albanian, word for man organ is pronounced “car”. You make show about cocks,' he said, poking me in the chest and roaring with laughter.

It wasn't quite the education I'd had in mind, but no matter. Off we set through what looked like a cross between Odessa, Miami South Beach and Benidorm in 1969. If you can imagine such a place.

All guides who grew up with communism like to give you facts and figures that prove their country is better than yours. This was a point picked up deliciously by Sacha Baron Cohen, who famously pointed out that Kazakhstan is the ‘world's number one exporter of potassium'.

Fatso, however, made Borat look like an amateur. After explaining that there were now two roads to the ruins – two! – and how much each of them had cost, and how Saranda is the sunniest place in all of Europe, he suggested we stop off at a nearby spring. ‘Albania has more water than any other country after Norway,' he explained, before revealing how much water, exactly, is produced by the spring in question. ‘It's 375 cubic metres every second,' he said, thumping the steering wheel of his van with joy. ‘That is 1.35 million cubic metres every hour. And that is 32.4 million cubic metres a day. Albanian water, too. Best water in world.' He was nowhere near finished. ‘In this region we produce 45,000 tons of watermelons every year. Second best region for watermelons in all of Albania,' he added, grabbing his heart and blinking to stop himself crying with pride.

My son, annoyingly, wasn't interested in these remarkable statistics and asked if there was a shop where he could buy an Albanian football shirt. Fatso was overcome with rage:
‘Albania football team number one in world, but every match, referee is biased,' he thundered. ‘One time, John Terry cut off Albania striker's head and Albania striker was sent off. In a match against Dutch peoples, we scored nine goals, all disallowed by referee.'

By this stage, I was eating the inside of my face in an effort to stop myself laughing. And that was before we got to Albania's crime rate. ‘None,' he said, bouncing up and down in his seat. ‘There is no crime of any sort. And Christians live side by side with Muslims in perfect harmony.'

We turned to Albania's recent past. ‘In communists' time, there were some things good. Some things bad. Bad things? One man say to government spy that he had no spoon for his sugar and got seventeen years in jail. Another man ask why Corfu harbour have a light when we have no light. He got twenty-five years.' So what were the good things? ‘Everyone have job and supply of water under control.'

At this point, we arrived at Butrint. This, it's said, is where Hector's missus and a few mates set up shop after the fall of Troy. It was very hot, and the guide there was keen to show us every building and how we could tell which bits had been built by the Greeks, which bits by the Romans and which by the Venetians. It's exactly what children should do on a summer holiday, this. Learn stuff. Not just drink vodka and snog.

But I wanted to get back in the van with Fatso and learn more about the glorious nation of Albania. He was waiting in the car park with an Albanian beer. ‘Best in world,' he said. And it was. But then beer always is when you're hot and it's not.

On the way back to Saranda, I noticed that a sizeable percentage of all the cars had British plates. ‘How come?' I asked. ‘Ah,' said Fatso, ‘many Albanians go to England, get job, buy car and come here with it on holiday.' I see. Another
thing I noticed is that most of the houses had been knocked over. ‘Why's that?' I asked. ‘Earthquake,' he said with an impish smile. ‘Government earthquake. You build house with no permission, special forces come with bulldozers and knock it down.'

And so there you are. We'd gone to Albania to learn about cement but we'd come away with minds enriched by so much more. We knew how much water is produced every hour by the spring. We knew how many watermelons are produced each year. We knew about planning regulations in Saranda and the Albanian word for ‘cock'.

That's the thing about going on holiday with me. It's so much more fun. I should be a tour operator.

5 September 2010