Solar

I remember sun-kissed holidays from my youth.

Running in and out of the sea wedged in a blow-up dolphin rubber ring, going wrinkly from spending hours in the camp swimming pool, catching crabs at Wells. And that was just on one Club 18-30 holiday.*  (*joking Mum, for God’s sake, I’m joking).

Our holidays were special; it’s not just the rose-tinted specs of hindsight filtering them pink. I just remember having mountains of fun, with Mum making amazing cars and boats out of sand for us to play in, and Dad being the biggest kid of all, horsing around on the beach, always, always playing games with us.

We returned last week from a special holiday of our own. It was our turn to be the responsible grown-ups. We took our two kids to the Isle of Wight for a week, to a cheapo Haven Holiday-alike family resort, and thanks to the magical ingredient of constant sunshine, and the marvellous horsing-around skills of my husband, I’m hoping we’ve managed to brew up some potent solar-powered memories for our children.

When you go on holiday with a child with Prader-Willi Syndrome, there’s an extra level of planning. As well as the sun-cream and beach towels, you make room in your bags for healthy snacks and a low-fat picnic for the journey, because you can’t rely on motorway service stations to have low-calorie menu options. You stick a couple of extra items of healthy food in your glovebox just in case you get stuck in a traffic jam. You pack that emergency tuna pasta meal that doesn’t need to be kept refrigerated just in case the traffic jam turns out to be a monster of a marmalade. (By the way, terrorists, you’ve really put a spanner in the works when it comes to foreign flight travel, because in the eyes of airport security a low-fat jelly pot might as well be a low-fat gelignite pot, you utter bastards).

When you travel with someone with PWS, you have to check venues and menus in advance of mealtimes to be sure you’ll be able to order something suitable at the right time of day. And if you’re the parent of my particular PWS child, then you also have to check whether a restaurant or pub sells tomato juice, and even more importantly, will add the required large dash of tabasco or Worcestershire sauce to make it spicy.

But I’m making this all sound like a a right pain, when it isn’t. Because after 14 years of this, it becomes second nature: we know which lollipops are under 80 calories; we’re used to strolling along the esplanade, peering at the restaurant menus and opening times a little more closely and a little earlier in the day than most; and we’re canny about splitting that afternoon snack so that our daughter can have some ‘extra’ nibbles on an evening out in the holiday clubhouse, as she watches redcoat wannabes sweat their little socks off. (And boy, with the weather we had, they really were extremely sweaty. I’m convinced that whoever was hidden under the furry, thermal layers of the Mr Bear costume must have been on a drip after each performance). 

We visited theme parks, we rode in cable cars down to The Needles, we got stuck in giant deckchairs, and we played and lazed on the beach where my my husband and little boy built sandcastles and dams whilst my daughter and I read on sun loungers under a parasol, having an English siesta, otherwise known as ‘a little nap’.

We had a blast. A sunny, blazing blast. I’ll remember it. I hope they do, too.

Video is Sex Pistols - Holidays In The Sun. Again, sorry Mum.

Jubilee

You will enjoy yourselves, whether you like it or not

The rain drummed down. Our street was empty. Waterlogged bunting sagged forlornly along the fronts of Nos 1, 9 and 10.

I’d checked with my neighbour Julie that the Jubilee street party was still going ahead, but so far, no-one had braved the rain.

“Right,” I said to my husband, adopting an inspirational voice-over tone. “If we build it they will come.”  Although he insists that what I actually said was: “Get that effing gazebo out there, we’re going to get this party started.”

I was dressed as if for a deep sea fishing trip, in a huge waterproof mac. He had decided to don a pair of shorts, sandals, and an Hawaiian shirt. We started to assemble our flimsy shelter. And, sure enough, doors started to open. Fellow residents began to assemble. Other gazebos and picnic tables started to appear. A rain-lashed, windswept, shanty town was erected, much of it weighted down with boxes of beer (which rapidly lost effectiveness with every bottle that was consumed).

Nanna and Grandad, despite not living in our street, were allowed to join in the festivities. In the grand tradition of old-fashioned British values, I kept calling them “bloody foreigners”. 

My daughter, who hates the cold and the wet, was wrapped up warm in a chair and supplied with lots of chopped up peppers, salad, low-fat coleslaw, cold chicken, and other healthy grub. There was a vast array of cakes and puddings and all the things she can’t eat because of the strict low-fat diet she has to be on to remain a healthy weight. This is exactly the kind of occasion that used to fill me with dread when she was younger, but we've developed some effective strategies over the years. (The technique on this occasion: sit her next to Nanna, who will remain alert and responsible and make sure her grand-daughter only eats what she’s allowed, while her wayward parents wander around chatting).

My son, a bundle of grumpiness for the first half hour, wrapped himself in a blanket and played on his sister’s DS. He only poked his head out when he spotted a teetering tower of Jubilee cupcakes. I’m not exactly sure how many he had, but the resulting sugar rush inspired a frantic game of ‘What can I knock over if I stand three feet away and boot my football at the tables?’ The ensuing destruction and mayhem, of course, cheered him right up.

The weather added another unexpected level of enjoyment: when the wind blew, intermittent Total Wipeout-style sudden sloshes of water splashed down from the tops of the gazebo, landing on heads, laps and sandwiches. Very funny, when it was someone else.

We provided the music by looping an extension lead over my back garden wall, and sticking one of our Sonos hi-fi boxes on the table - weatherproofing it by sticking it in a Bag For Life). I’d prepared a Jubilee playlist (you know, stuff like Jubilee Myself and I, Jubileesy Like Sunday Morning). I did throw in God Save The Queen by The Sex Pistols, in the hope of sparking an argument, but the general levels of drunken chumminess were high, and I realised there were probably only about four people there who would really count themselves as Royalists. 

Popping down the pop-up gazebo
proved spectacularly unsuccessful

By around 6pm, before the first symptoms of hypothermia and trenchfoot were beginning to manifest themselves, we started to disembark from the Jubilee jetty. Empties were collected, my husband and my Dad made a terrible, hilarious, and ultimately fatal, job of disassembling the gazebo, and we said goodbye to the neighbours.

During all of this, the Queen (God Save Her and Her fascist regime) had hardly been mentioned. So what had it all been about?

Well, we were a bunch of people who live in the same road, who don’t always see a lot of eachother because of work, and the way we sometimes tend to cocoon ourselves in our own little spaces.

Someone had had the idea of getting together on a day when lots of other people were doing something similar. It was nice. It was friendly. We spent the afternoon with big grins on our faces, in a soggy little community. And as an added bonus, this meant that we were nowhere near our tellies or radios, so could avoid the TV coverage of the event and its accompanying mass media tidal wave of unctuous lickspittling.

It was an excuse for a party. An excuse to have a few drinks. So we did. By the end of it, in fact, we had invented two new words for being sloshed whilst taking part in a royal celebration. The first: getting bunted. The second: jubileebriated. 

Video is Sex Pistols - God Save The Queen