Ges on the Box; El of a job to get to Spain

Oops, sorry, it just slipped out. I don’t want to gloat or anything but while you’re supping tea and reading this over your egg and chips, I’m sitting in an olive grove somewhere north of Malaga, quaffing sangria, munching a tortilla and watching the sun do down over the Spanish hills. Hic!

But as I write, we haven’t quite left not-so-sunny Shaw.

Him Indoors is busy making the final preparations — squeezing the sun tan lotion into his man bag and packing the Alka Seltza, paracetamol, insect repellant, Elastoplast and malaria tablets.

We jet off from Manchester in the middle of the night and there are still a few things to do.

Like lose the three stones I promised myself I’d lose when I booked this holiday. It’s still achievable. If I chop off my right leg. Maybe my left one as well . . .

And I’ve still got to book a hire car from the airport. I left it a tad late and the only one available is a Mercedes for £700. I’d sort of envisaged a Ka for £130.

The budget is stretched as tight as my knickers as it is — I booked the flights for the wrong day and had to change them. My advice to you is always double check, because airlines make a fortune in fines if you so much as change your shoes.

Suffice to say, it’s costing us £600 for return flights into Malaga. We could have gone to Las Vegas for that.

Still, it’ll all be worth it in 12 hours when we land, pick up a Ka (keep your fingers crossed that someone, somewhere has cancelled) and drive to . . . well, I’m not exactly sure where, but so long as I remember to print out the email with directions, we’ll be just fine.

I doubt Him Indoors will ever let me organise anything again. Brewery and the proverbial drink spring to mind. Not after my new passport only arrived yesterday. He didn’t know it wasn’t safely filed away in the cupboard, which is just as well or he’d have had a nervous breakdown.

I haven’t yet found a way to break the news about the hire car yet. . .

It’s not that we’re incompatible, just as different as chalk and cheese.

He’s organised and I’m. . . well, I’m not. He likes things done yesterday, I prefer to do them tomorrow. Anything rather than what I should be doing. Which is how I came to be watching “A Matter Of Loaf Or Death” when I should have been shaving my legs.

You can’t beat Wallace And Grommit, half a dozen or so good puns and a happy ending for putting me in a holiday mood.