Sally-Part 62. DAVID ! YOU'LL HAVE TO GO BACK ! THEY'VE OVERCHARGED ON THE NECTARINES !

POPPIES IN THE GARDEN ON COLONSAY MAY 25th 2012!

It's a long six hour drive to catch the ferry to here and we can no longer do it without an overnight hotel and in fact as I can't even drive for more than twenty minutes from home without starting to yawn unless I've got a bag of raw carrots cut into strips to chew on and had an hour's snooze beforehand even if we're leaving at ten in the morning, long distance travel is now out of the question!

So when Shirley told me that she just HAD to get back to Colonsay, I thought only 'Carrots!' . And that's probably my entire contribution to our holiday plans!

A YEAR OR TWO BACK ON THE TOP OF 'THE AERIALS' WITH A 360* VIEW !

THE PAPS OF JURA FROM OUR WALK TO THE SILVER BEACHES!

We sort of 'gave up' on Colonsay a couple of years ago, having spent many holidays here, for as long as a month at a time, once we'd bought our second home in Dumfries and Galloway.

SECOND HOME? I hear you ask!

Alright, a caravan!

In fact a static not a tourer!

SO WHO WOULD NEED TO GO ON HOLIDAY WHEN YOU OWN THIS ?

O.K ! A large, double-glazed, centrally-heated beauty set high on a hill facing south over the ocean in a dream position and only at most three hours from home, which I can just about manage without an overnight break!

Shirley discovered this jewel of an Island about twenty five years ago and the truth is that it's magic draws you back and you'll perhaps appreciate why when you look at the photos.

AND WE RARELY SEE ANYONE ELSE ALL DAY !

The pure white sand beaches and clear turquoise seas, the absolute silence and the fantastic heat that we've had this mostly windless week have been QUITE magical and incomparable!

DOES ANYONE NEED A CAPTION ? !

IT  DOESN'T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS ! BEATING JONATHAN FOR THE THIRD TIME JUST AFTER SUNSET AT 10:30 PM !

MYSELF, JULIAN AND JONATHAN DEAD WITH HEAT BEFORE WE'VE EVEN STARTED !

PLAYING GOLF INTO THE SETTING SUN ! 9:45 LAST SATURDAY ! TEMP DOWN TO 25*C !

Playing golf and sometimes crying with laughter at ridiculously immature things with my sons until it got too dark at ten thirty, whilst all the time watching the amazing skies as the sun sunk into a totally clear horizon was unforgettable and probably unrepeatable !

I CAN'T RISK BREAKING MY LEGS SO RESTRICT MY LEAPS TO TWENTY FOOT DROPS !

I managed a highly respectable four foot leap off the thirty foot sand dunes, showing them how a sixty three year old still 'had it' before filming them running and bounding twenty feet further than me! And that's what sand dunes are for ! Not nanby-pamby wildlife preservation!

NOT YET OLD ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND DANGER !

I wouldn't join in as they kited on Killoran Bay with Julian's monster which smashed me into the ground a couple of years ago, breaking every rib...well bruising one of them a little and I was reluctant to swim in the calm sea which was cold enough to make a man's eyes cross once the water reached a certain level!

JUST BEFORE IT DUMPED HIM ONTO THE DOCTOR'S COUCH !

KIDS AND THE SEA HUH ?

NOT THIS YEAR THANKS !

THE BOYS COULDN'T WAIT TO GET BACK TO WORK !

 BUT losing at the Pub-Quiz-Night was pathetically one thing that really got the three of us shaking our heads in disbelief, especially as the local who has won it just about every week for the last ten years is known to be a Quiz Swot !

No ordinary person with 'general' knowledge could possibly know ' Which is the the only country in the world with a plain dark green flag ?' ( a real question! ) or the answer to other even more obscure and I admit made-up questions like ' Name the medical procedure for removing the pituitary gland and how many members of staff would be present in the operating theatre at the time? ' or ' How many grains of sand are there in Australia?' or ' What was the name of the boat that the first Norwegians built to row to America in in 1286 ? ' or ' Name the winners of all the Eurovision Song Contests' or ' What chemical compound is represented by the symbol Hg4So8Pb6H5O'? ( answers on a postcard to this web address will win a packet of Tesco's' Value' Butterscotch sweets...closing date Oct 1937....no members of my family or their friends may enter! )

This week the combined intellects of a lawyer, an ex-army Captain and an all-round hugely intelligent man ( that's me and I got three right ! ) could only manage thirty five out of fifty whilst the winner effortlessly cruised to forty six!

If only he didn't win up to thirty quid of our money each time!

As all the regulars plead to be on his team and we don't stand a chance, we kiss our three pound coins goodbye!

Enough already!

This trip actually nearly never happened or would have been severely curtailed because we almost missed the ferry or rather Shirley nearly made me nearly make us miss the ferry!

I'm fairly relaxed about most things but not about missing trains, planes, appointments or ferries!

Shirley is 'THE GREAT ORGANISER' and as such knows everything in absolute detail and expects that once she has briefly mentioned a ferry departure time to me in passing six months before it leaves that I am able to hold that information and retrieve it at will !

Well I'm NOT !

My memory lasts slightly longer than a goldfish's but by not much!

For example, If I'm listening to a piece of music on the radio that I want to remember, I'll get a pad and pen ready and then if I remember to listen to the announcer naming the piece, which I don't, I immediately forget it as he's saying it and can't remember what he has literally just said !

Then I'll see the pad and pen lying there and wonder why I put it there and whether or not it was me who put it there in the first place, by which time I can't remember the tune of the piece I was listening to so I can't even hum it to ask Shirley if she knows what the tune is I'm humming as, by the time I walk through to the lounge to ask her why I've just walked through to the lounge because I've forgotten why I've walked through to the lounge and then as I can't hum, sing or whistle a tune without making it unrecognisably flat or piercingly shrill she just tells me to go back to work and not disturb her again as she is reading important speculation stuff about the latest woman Josh Groban's been seen with ! ( See " HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOSH GROBAN! " )

SO! If you don't want to have to pay £3:40 for a loaf and a small bottle of semi-skimmed you have to do a BIG shop in Oban first.

But the temperature was already soaring as we reached the town four hours before our sailing, having spent the night in a lodge forty miles out to be close enough to leave at dawn with plenty of time to get to the port for the mid-afternoon departure, allowing for a couple of naps on a nearby beach before setting out on our three-layered shopping spree!

First and with two hours to go....ALDI FOR CRAP ! ( That should be their Slogan ! )

So that meant a full size trolley which I always get as Shirley has never understood where to put the pound coin to release one.

I'll hand that over before going back to the car to get the list that she has left there.

Her instruction to "Choose whatever YOU want as I can't read your mind! NO! Put them back!" results in me whimpering as I'm denied everything that I REALLY want and settle for her choice for me of a packet of 'ALDI' Rich Tea Biscuits !

Then on to TESCO'S where even though the trollies are free Shirley still can't work out how to pull one backwards out of the rack and so I do that and then run back to the car for the list that she's forgotten again!

Shirley likes to push the trolley in Tesco's as the floors are smooth and so I'm left to look 'interested' and to go fetch the " NOT easy cook brown rice ! " and other non-perishables that are scattered around the store in a system of logic that only ' Management Consultants' such as my daughter works for could possibly justify.

Non-perishables done and with time starting to speed up I choose the only cashier who's new to the job and can't work out what to do with a customer's credit card that's just been rejected thus leaving two hundred and eighty pounds worth of goods to be returned to their shelves and with the customer who is apoplectic with rage as he screams revenge on his newly divorced wife !

So, repacking my unpacked trolley I move to the queue with the least amount of people in it and try to not turn puce and shout " Shut up and move yourself ! You are not the only person in the world with piles!" as each of the locals I've managed to stand behind decide to discuss their medical problems with the cashier!

At last! A quick dash back to the car parked in the only shady part to unload before returning for the perishables!

It's all sensible really!

And then with all perishables packed into the collection of freezer boxes brought for the purpose and me  thinking that there's plenty of time to drive the five minutes to the ferry which is due to leave, I've remembered from six months before, at twenty to the hour................

DISASTER !

 I'm roused from my general day-dreaming stupor by Shirley who is standing staring in dismay at the receipt and pointing at a line too small for me to read without a microscope, howls.......

 "DAVID ! YOU'LL HAVE TO GO BACK ! THEY'VE OVERCHARGED ON THE NECTARINES ! "

So off I dawdle to find three members of staff who CAN'T discover the proper price after each has individually escorted me to the unpriced Nectarine display shelf except for the notice on the Nectarine basket's handle which reads "Half Price" and which had apparently been wrongly placed in the £1 area by mistake!

Such trials is life made of !

" Surely " I say a little patronisingly, " No-one would pay £1:69 for five slightly over-ripe and pitted Nectarines would they? "

The cashier in 'Customer Services' was just about to make the hardest decision of her life by actually using her initiative and was standing there with her brows really crushed tightly together trying to think something or anything when the store froze to a man and woman as a blood-curdling scream rang out:

"DAVID ! THE FERRY'S LEAVING IN FIFTEEN MINUTES AND I'VE HAD TO LEAVE THE CAR UNLOCKED AND MY BOWELS HAVE TURNED TO JELLY WAITING FOR YOU ! RUN !"

I hadn't dared to ask the departure time in case Shirley got a bit impatient and accused me of never listening to her ( which I now dare to admit I don't ! ) and had truthfully thought it left half an hour later than it did !

Shirley stood in the entrance looking a little flustered and I just had time to make the cashier write " 30p owing on Nectarines " on my receipt before driving like an idiot to the ferry terminal where, last in line, I still had to run like mad for over a quarter of a mile each way to the office and back to get our tickets!

I shall be revisiting that store when I return to the mainland to claim my money!

At least I didn't nearly forget to get off the ferry like my two sons did the next day when I saw them waiting one floor too high for the gangway which was about to be dropped after the leavers had boarded to be lifted into place so that they could descend to the quay!

And they would probably have spent the next three days not getting off as they wondered whether Colonsay was further away than they remembered !

Once again dear readers, I leave you and this time in wonder and breathless with anticipation as to whether I get my refund !

Fear not ! I WILL reveal the outcome !