July 2024

Daddy says it is deeply ironic that for someone who goes on (and on, and on) about travelling, my mummy hates the actual travelling part of the trip. Mummy likes to say things like ‘it’s the journey, not the destination’ but in real life Daddy has to buy her noise cancelling headphones to cope with other passengers and loud ‘musak’ in airports. Daddy sits with us on the flight and buys mummy gin and tonics and crisps and then she ignores us for the rest of the journey but tells us she is just ‘channelling calm’ because she hates flying and shouts F*@K ME! and grabs other randommers by the arm when there’s turbulence. We like sitting beside Daddy better.

Mummy complained A LOT about our flight to Dubrovnik and there wasn’t even any turbulence.

Our trip had begun well, because to save money and ‘reduce our carbon footprint’ we took the coach to Dublin airport which zoomed us down in such good time that we arrived before check-in had even opened. This gave Mummy plenty of time to complain about all the plastic bottles in the cafes and ask questions about recycling facilities. Daddy told her about the bottle return scheme which encourages recycling in the South which is another reason why a United Ireland is best for all concerned and Mummy told him to be quiet and just eat his chicken.

After check-in Mummy said, ‘Let’s get me wine!’ and Daddy found a bar very quickly and Mummy said it was a ‘lovely bar’ which hardly ever happens.  My sister and I went off to buy sucky sweets for take-off but when we came back Mummy was wearing her noise-cancelling-headphones because the bar wasn’t lovely after all as it was right beside a hotdog stand and a crowd of German men wearing matching t-shirts were yelling across the bar about fried onions and ketchup. Mummy said that Stag parties were a ‘scourge upon society’ and then Daddy ordered another large beer.

Just as Mummy was looking excited and saying, ‘It’s nearly time! It’s nearly time!’ Daddy told her our flight was delayed. He ordered us more Tayto but Mummy said NO MORE FANTA! because of her fear of dental cavities. Daddy ordered it anyway and bought her another wine which she pretended she didn’t want but she drank it very quickly for someone who said she didn’t want one in the first place.

FINALLY, we traipsed off to board which took a LONG time because there were a lot of VERY old people who were in a group and Mummy said they all looking, ‘extremely animated’ despite being so old. Daddy said there was a priest in charge who he’d seen having a Gunness and he looked like ‘yer man off Ballykissangel’ and Mummy said ‘ooh!’ because she has a thing about ‘good-looking men of the cloth.’

When we got on the flight it was freezing and Mummy looked very jealous because Daddy had brought his hoodie and she only had a little cardigan and a scarf which she then WRAPPED AROUND HER LEGS. I told her she looked like a burrito and she gave me ‘The Look’. I was glad we were beside Daddy. We were all strapped in and ready to go when the Captain said we’d have to sit on the runway for an hour and Mummy said, FOR EFF’S SAKE CAN THIS GET ANY WORSE?  It did get worse but I’m tired now and I will finish this another day because I’m getting ‘The Look’ again, and have to unload the dishwasher.

Since coming home from holiday, Mummy has complained that she needs a holiday to get over coming home from holiday.

Mummy got a pet-sitter* from a website to look after the cats and do something called ‘basic house care’ but apparently the sitter did ‘shag all’ apart from keeping the cats alive. Despite Mummy having e-mailed ‘detailed instructions’ she didn’t put ANY of the bins out, which is a criminal offence as far as Mummy is concerned. Daddy says is Mummy is ‘bin obsessed’,  especially in summer time when they can get smelly. Also, our blue bin is always overflowing because Mummy collects stuff she thinks might not get recycled by other people and brings it home to put in our bin and then Daddy has to get inside the blue bin and stand on it. I don’t think he likes this.

The house-sitter also never unloaded the dishwasher that Mummy had put on the morning that we went away AND HAD SHOWN HER HOW TO USE IT. When we came home and Mummy opened it I heard her shout the eff word many times because her plates were covered with blue mould.

The house-sitter also left a day early which posed a problem with the cats. Daddy had to organise for Grandad to come over and let them out, but the cats just hid under the sofa and eye-balled him and refused to leave. The next day Mummy wasn’t in a very good mood after travelling all night, and when we got in she was very annoyed when she went upstairs and found a massive poo on her bed. Mummy said it could have been done by a rhinoceros because it was so big and she says this is known as a ‘revenge dump’.  She shouted the eff word A LOT while she was cleaning it off the mattress protector.

The culprit.

Mummy also can’t stop sneezing because she has an allergy to cat hair which she normally manages by going through six lint rollers a week. But despite leaving said rollers around the house the pet-sitter neglected to use any and the cats had ‘moulted tremendously’ according to Mummy. All her new dark blue velvet chairs from Next were covered in white cat fur and the back of one had been used as a scratching post. Daddy asked when she was going to get around to buying the covers for them that she keeps going on about but Mummy gave him the side-eye and said had he not noticed that she had been REALLY EFFING BUSY RECENTLY?

When Daddy made Mummy her ‘post-holiday cup of tea’ she wouldn’t sit down to drink it until she had lint-rollered half the house and when she did sit down it was not only cold but had cat hairs floating in it. I thought Mummy might cry.

Tilly wasn’t left with the house-sitter as she goes on her own doggy holidays to her dog-walker Shane, who my mum says is ‘a saintly creature.’ But he had collected Tilly before she had eaten her Pedigree Chum that Mummy had left out for her and the house-sitter never scraped it into the bin. When Daddy lifted it the bowl to clean it he dropped it on the floor because he said it was ‘moving’ and it turned out that there were maggots in it. He shouted BOKE and started retching and Mummy shouted the eff word again. I had never seen a maggot so I was interested at first but then I saw them and I retched too and Mummy shouted NOT ON THE CARPET!

Daddy then made a terrible mistake because he asked Mummy did she not check the reviews for the house-sitter and Mummy said she DID look for reviews but she couldn’t find any and Daddy said DID THAT NOT TELL YOU SOMETHING ABOUT HER? and Mummy stormed off to lie down and then shouted F*#K again because she forgotten that she’d have to make their bed up after the rhino-sized poo.

Last time I saw Mummy she was on the Easy Jet website and I saw ONE ADULT TRAVELLING ALONE on the screen. Daddy doesn’t think the one adult is him.

*Before any future house-sitters come Mummy says she is going to read some guidance very carefully.

I’m just back from a family holiday in Dubrovnik and the post-trip glow is fading as fast as my tan, especially when I check my bank-balance and have to take deep yogic breaths. Croatia, I’ve since been told, is renowned for being expensive, but I missed the memo and only realized half-way through, after blithely charging drinks to the room at the pool-side bar.

But, if you aren’t heading abroad and think you’ll miss this feeling of being royally ripped off, never fear- take a spin to the Old Inn in Crawfordsburn and enjoy being robbed closer to home.

When I met my friend for a catch-up in back in June, I’d felt feelings of warm nostalgia bubbling up at the prospect of our meal there. In our twenties we used to visit The Old Inn often, popping in for coffee after a coastal walk, or long chats by the foreside at Christmas, our hands cupped around glasses of red wine. Sometimes we’d spot Gary Lightbody, and that would make our night because not only has he a cracker set of lungs on him but he’s a decent sort, is our Gary.

He wasn’t there on this occasion though, and I can only surmise that he won’t be there with the same regularity because he’d fairly fritter his fortune away.

Readers- the prices are EYE-WATERING; enough to make you cough up your cappuccino, should you be foolish enough to fork out £5.50 for a cup. You can try ordering tap-water, but it took me three goes to get a glass delivered to my table.

Menu choices were limited and well, strange. The bar menu was standard fare, but it was all on the heavy side. I know the jet-stream has wandered off-course but I at least wanted to pretend it’s summer, so I wasn’t after a lamb casserole or fish pie.

The A La Carte menu didn’t excite either. I didn’t want veal or duck or smoked mackerel with eel mayonnaise- (would anyone?)

And so I settled for the aubergine curry, after having to ask for the vegetarian menu, which was another disappointment. Tell me this, since when does white asparagus and olive oil potatoes constitute an actual meal? As a menopausal woman, I didn’t feel I should have to ask for eggs on the side to ensure I met my protein target for dinner.

Back to my order. ‘Have you tried it?’ I asked our server, because the whole menu indicated that it would promise much but under-deliver. ‘Oh yes,’ she replied, ‘it’s good, very fragrant.’ Now, she had me at fragrant, because notional creature that I am, I thought of velvety massaman curry with coconut and galangal. Alas, whoever concocted this curry wouldn’t have known fragrant if a stick of lemongrass had speared them in the eye. A bowl of brown gelatinous gloop appeared, the base of which, I can only imagine came from a generic plastic tub one finds in the Asian supermarket. Swimming in the sludge were a few beans and a token amount of aubergine. The key ingredient appeared to be sliced potato. It came with rice, but no little extras. A small portion of poppadums would have livened up proceedings, likewise nan bread, maybe even chutney or raita. The one garnish, plonked atop the rice, was a clump of sodden watercress; that one ingredient a curry should never be without. But I get it, who wants to go off in search of  fresh coriander on a summer’s evening? Bit of a faff, that.

My friend lives in New Zealand now, so when she converted the prices she baulked at the thought of paying over forty dollars for a burger. Instead, she ordered arancini from the list of starters and a portion of fries. It was underwhelming.

We weren’t convinced that a dessert would be worth it’s £10 price tag, but that did mean we were denied sitting on and listening to a fellow patron chortle at loud videos on his phone for another half hour. Maybe this is what Trip Advisor meant when it said the Inn was ‘a playful blend of the old and new.’ At least my visiting friend was treated to some cultural highlights of NI in the summer time, as the bar area afforded direct views of local Orangemen vaping outside the Lodge.

A homely, convivial ambiance has always been the charm of the Old Inn, and is why, I suppose, people keep coming back. But since the change in ownership, and the hike in prices for such mediocre offerings, I can’t see me returning. ‘Trust us, you’ll love it,’ says their website. That’s just one of the many things they got wrong.