Listing TH White is a bit of
a cheat: it's the first book of the Once And Future King, but I fancied a
change after reading it. It's much more irreverent than I was expecting - far more in the Neil
Gaiman vein than Walter Scott or the historical realism school. The book before
contained not a single mention of fudge, but was an indulgent chat about maps
and map-related ephemera. Loved it. Both
were read on holiday in the Vendee. A while ago I came across a list of
memories from our honeymoon and many of them would have been forgotten if they
hadn’t been recorded. Not the hideous pizza at Milan Railway Station, that will
stay with me forever.
In the same spirit,
here's my attempt at memories from the Vendee. . .
On the last day, we
had a family discussion about everyone's top 3 highlights. My three were (in no
particular order); Libby learning to ride a bike, Libby learning to ride a
bike, Libby learning to ride a bike. It took some doing and there were lots of tears
and stomping, and she's still not happy starting off on her own, but she rode a
bike! Hopefully we'll be able to get out this weekend and practise.
. . .[update after
the weekend}. Lib appears to have gone backwards sadly - she's not happy riding
her pink bike or the blue bike which is a bit big for her, so it hasn’t gone
well. It's frustrating as she's shown she can do it.
Back to the
holiday. The best day out was to Puy du
Fou, a bonkers historical re-enactment theme park. It's France's second biggest
attraction after Eurodisney, and the scale is incredible. Helen wasn't keen to
go, expecting a cross between the Chiltern Open Air Museum and the Sealed Knot,
but it was a fantastic spectacle, with no attempt at all at historical
authenticity. It started with Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, with
the Round Table (complete witj knights with an incredible ability to hold their breath, apparently) appearing when Merlin made a lake disappear, then onto the
Vikings invading a village in France where a fullscale longboat complete with
vikings emerged from the river, while mahoosive sea eagles swooped around. Couldn’t see how that would be topped, but then
in the Joan of Arc story the entire castle walls began to sink below the ground
and the keep started moving around the stage. You don't get that with English Heritage. None of this compared to the
gladiator show in the Coliseum which took the bonkersness to new heights. First
a parade featuring geese, a cart of ostriches and a leopard, and then a full
chariot race. The biggest surprise came when the christians were in the arena
waiting to be eaten by lions, and they actually released lions into the arena.
Whatever they are paying the actors playing the christians isn't enough to be dealing with that every day, twice at weekends.
Finally there was the indoors Musketeers show, where they gradually flooded a stage the size of a polo field as horses performed a flamenco. What a day out.
Other memories
- The excitement of Fred and Lib at encountering the inexplicable statue of a Beefeater in a café in St Hilaire. He was surrounded by croquet ephemera
- F&L both won awards at Kid's Club, Fred for being the coolest kid in the club, Lib for being the fastest pizza eater. We're so proud.
- Fred went on a min-quad bike for the first time. He was obviously scared, and had trouble controlling it, and finished early. Afterwards he couldn’t talk about anything else though and listed it as a highlight of his holiday. Maybe we should try karting. . .
- Fred was game to try a few new things. He ate some of my sardines and fish, but couldn't be persuaded to try a mussel. He also went into one of those parlours with the little fish that nibble the dead skin off your feet. 10 euros it cost me for his feet to be tickled by whitebait.
- Bibs is managing to stand by himself for a few seconds and take a few steps, but he doesn’t seem happy about it - it's a bit soon yet though.
- The kids were very good at making new friends, which Helen struggles to get her head round as when she was a kid they would never play with other kids on holiday. Fred had new best friends within thirty seconds of jumping into the pool, and got on with a kid called Finlay in particular. He was properly distraught when Fin left halfway through our holiday. It only lasted one night though, and the next day he was out playing football with the new kids who had moved in. Lib latched on to some poor 3 year old from Dublin called Aaron, and insisted on showing him round the caravan and the camp. He was so lovely and polite, just responding 'dat's cool' to everything Lib showed him.
- We hired a Rosalie bike, which was apparently invented to torture tall fathers, who bang their knees against the steering wheel with every pedal rotation. Every downhill section where pedalling wasn’t required was bliss.
- In the tiny sliver of downtime Helen and I get between putting the kids to bed, doing the housework and collapsing exhausted into bed, we often watch boxsets. This was the holiday when we completed Breaking Bad (begun nearly 2 years ago when we were on holiday on the IoW), and began Game of Thrones Series 4.
- A Treasure Hunt in the rain that the couriers were making up as they went along. As part of it we had to get a photo of Fred hugging a stranger (some drunken fella in the camp bar) and a video of us all doing the Macarena. Evidence has been deleted.
- On the way back home, we called into Nantes for the day, where they old docks have been converted into a steampunk workshop designing and making gigantic beasts. The 4xlifesize African elephant and howdah was crazy. It was actually better watching it as a spectator than being on board, where you can’t appreciate all the moving parts, trumpets and squirts of water. It was like some mammoth from Mance Rayder's army of wildlings (obscure GoT reference that will mean nothing to me in a few years).
- Finally, the magic of a beach. The kids seem to be able to stay on a beach forever. It doesn’t seem to matter whether or not they have spades, buckets, kites, balls or whatever, they are just happy to be on a beach and will always find something interesting or exciting. May it stay that way forever.
. . . Fred's wriiten
down his own memories on a scrap of paper. We'll put it away and hopefully come
across it in a few years/decades and remember a wonderful holiday.
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