Tuesday 27 July 2010

Conversations With Lauren


I have some great conversations with my granddaughter Lauren. I really should have recorded them all.

The problem is I haven't to laugh. She hates you laughing at her. However sometimes it's hard to keep a straight face.



On the way back from the park this afternoon this was how the conversation went:


Lauren: Niamh's grandma got runned over by a bus.
Me:        I hope she's better now.
Lauren: No, she's in the ground. That's what happens when you get runned over, you get digged in the road!


There's no answer to that!


Post 160

Wednesday 21 July 2010

Ridiculous Complaints Made by British Holidaymakers


Often when you’re on holiday, you hear people making daft comments/complaints about the hotel, food, staff etc.  Obviously I only hear the English comments, aside from English,  I only speak a smattering of Spanish so I have no idea what the French, German, Russian holidaymakers say about the place. Our reputation is one of a nation of moaners and I sometimes think they’re right.

A couple of years ago in a Greek hotel we've stayed at for a number of years, one particular English family complained about the food.  Believe me the food was amazing. At lunch there were two restaurants serving lots of different dishes, meat, fish, pasta, vegetables, salad etc. There were, Chinese buffet two evenings, French & Greek a la carte two evenings, Italian & Greek buffets the other evenings and there was a fantastic choice of all types of hot and cold food.  My daughter and I don’t eat meat yet we never have a problem finding lovely food.  Well this family complained about the food and asked to eat in the Chinese restaurant every night.  They said that all they had to eat was pizza and chips for two weeks. What a load of rubbish!  I don’t know where they had been eating but it certainly wasn’t at the hotel.  They even commented on Trip Advisor that they had never been so pleased to see a McDonalds.  What a shower!

I read about the “Twenty Most Ridiculous Complaints Made by Holidaymakers” on the Daily Telegraph website today and maybe they were not the most stupid tourists after all. These complaints were taken from research by Thomas Cook and ABTA.

Here they are in all their stupidity:
  • "We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our swimming costumes and towels." 
  • A tourist at a top African game lodge overlooking a waterhole, who spotted a visibly aroused elephant, complained that the sight of this rampant beast ruined his honeymoon by making him feel "inadequate". 
  • "On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food at all." 
  • "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons.  I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time - this should be banned." 
  • "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts."
  • "I was bitten by a mosquito - no-one said they could bite."
  • "It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel."
  • "We had to queue outside with no air conditioning." 
  • "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white."
  • "There are too many Spanish people. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners." 
  • "The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the accommodation'. We're trainee hairdressers - will we be OK staying here?"
  • "I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends' three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller."
  • "My fiancĂ© and I booked a twin-bedded room but we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked." 
  • "It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England it only took the Americans three hours to get home." 
  • "No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled."
  • "We bought 'Ray-Ban' sunglasses for five euros (£3.50) from a street trader, only to find out they were fake."
  • "Topless sunbathing on the beach should be banned. The holiday was ruined as my husband spent all day looking at other women."
  • A guest at a Novotel in Australia complained his soup was too thick and strong. He was inadvertently slurping the gravy at the time. 
  • "The beach was too sandy." 
  • A woman threatened to call police after claiming that she’d been locked in by staff. When in fact, she had mistaken the “do not disturb” sign on the back of the door as a warning to remain in the room.

I wonder whether people from other countries are as daft as this! You start to think that maybe everyone should take an IQ test when they apply for a passport.

Well as my Mam used to say “Some folks are just not safe to be let out!”


Post 159

The End of a Reign & the Passing of an Era

It's the day that most of us have dreaded even those who are not royalists.  Many of us grew up with her and have seen a long momentous ...