Greetings holiday blog lovers.  Well you will be glad to know that after three and half long, hard months, I can say goodbye to work and get on with what I do best.  Holidays.  On Friday, we are heading off the Spain for my sister Nikki’s birthday.  Now I’m too much of a gentleman to say how old she is, but let’s put it this way, if a batsman reached this total in a game of cricket, there would be gentle applause; if Heinz discontinued 7 of its varieties then they would be equal to Nik’s age; do you ever drive through roadworks on the motorway thinking “oh look, the speed limit is the same as my age”?  Well shortly, Nik will.

For her 40th birthday (which was 9 years and 51 weeks ago), instead of having a party she booked a villa and invited people to fly over and see her (how did we survive before Easyjet?).  It was great, it was like being in the Big Brother house but without the TV cameras and tattooed twonks getting in the way.  Well she has decided to do the same again, so on Friday, Karen and I, Nik and mum and dad are all flying out to Barcelona, then heading up to a villa near a village somewhere.  I’m afraid I’m a bit vague on the details.  I always am on these family holidays.  Nik is the lead travel organiser so I just turn up where I’m told and gather material for sarcastic blogs.  I do know that we will be eating well though.

On Thursday night, we had family “holiday planning meeting” (see picture).  We all turned up with notepads and planned the Big Shop, went through the itinerary of who was coming and when they were we going and planned a few days out.  I say “we”, Nikki and Karen wrote the most, mum and myself drunk a bottle of wine and dad occasionally made suggestions like “don’t forget to put nibbles on the shopping list” and “don’t forget to put vodka on the shopping list” and “don’t forget to put marmalade on the shopping list”.  I have one thing on my to do list.  “turn up on time”.  So this week is washing and packing week, then we fly on Friday morning.  First blog on Friday evening barring any disasters.  See you at the end of the week.