Day 55
The house is currently overflowing with holiday brochures.
This happens quite frequently. We try to take a two or three vacations every year which sounds wonderful, however, there’s a huge problem lurking within this idyllic scenario…the mother-in-law insists on coming with us every time. From past experience this is not good on a number of fronts.
Firstly, she can’t speak any other language apart from English (and this is a matter of some dispute) so when we get abroad, even basic communication is the source of potential disaster.
For example, last year we were in Portugal and the difficulties started within moments of landing at Faro airport. We were standing in a perfectly orderly line waiting to clear customs and mother-in-law decided she wanted to join a faster queue. This meant barging her way into an unsuspecting family who, in turn, jolted the couple in front of them who inadvertently bumped the couple in front of them. It was like a line of dominoes being pushed over.
Seconds later a full-scale fight had started.
In the middle of this fracas was a bewildered looking mother-in-law peering around and muttering about the terrible behavior of foreigners. Two of the police officers that ploughed in to restore order were armed with very large semi-automatic pistols so I decided against jumping in to push her in front of a swinging fist and edged to the immigration window instead.
Eventually things clamed down in the arrivals hall and we managed to leave the airport to get a taxi.
My Portuguese isn’t that bad so you would think it reasonable for your reporter to sort out luggage, price and associated details.
Wrong.
Mother-in-law insisted that she would take control and performed her own particular version of conversing in a foreign language. This consists of thrusting her face about two inches from that of the person with whom she wishes to talk and then screaming at them in English with her arms flapping around like a demented swan.
I was delighted when the driver looked her up and down like she’d fallen out of a sheep’s arsehole and responded in perfect English:
“Do you need a hospital or something?”
We eventually arrived at our destination and began unpacking. After a leisurely hour of getting organized and grabbing a beer or two I pulled on my Bermuda shorts and headed for the pool. You may think this was revolting image but believe me, when I got there and found myself facing a mother-in-law in a bikini; it put things into a very, very different perspective. And this was just the first day.
I haven’t eaten prunes since.
Understandably changing the subject, I’ve discovered why I’ve been unable to enter any of the freerolls on my usual site.
They’ve effectively stopped them!
I wonder whom the genius was who figured that one out. I can almost visualize the marketing meeting when this blinding flash of brilliance hit them…”I know, we’ll reduce the amount of prospective players and see how much money we can reduce our profits by!”. Clearly, the more people who play freeroll tournaments, the more likely they are to stay at that site and invest cash, so what’s the point of reducing potential sources of income? I guess you find donkeys in all walks of life.
There is still a $50 player points freeroll (not technically free) every day so I shall try to make sure I’m sat in front of the computer at the relevant time tomorrow.
Option two would of course be to change sites and start from scratch again.
The bad news in this scheme being that this diary will carry on for a lot longer and you guys will have to suffer more of my marginal sense of humour.
In the meantime, while I make my decision of whether I should transfer to a new site, the mother-in-law and Mrs. Snowman are deciding where to drag me on holiday. I have only two stipulations. Firstly it must be somewhere that’s speaks English and secondly it’s got to be somewhere so cold that mother-in-law has to wear at least three layers of clothing.
Starting bank: $0
Current bank: $1.76
This happens quite frequently. We try to take a two or three vacations every year which sounds wonderful, however, there’s a huge problem lurking within this idyllic scenario…the mother-in-law insists on coming with us every time. From past experience this is not good on a number of fronts.
Firstly, she can’t speak any other language apart from English (and this is a matter of some dispute) so when we get abroad, even basic communication is the source of potential disaster.
For example, last year we were in Portugal and the difficulties started within moments of landing at Faro airport. We were standing in a perfectly orderly line waiting to clear customs and mother-in-law decided she wanted to join a faster queue. This meant barging her way into an unsuspecting family who, in turn, jolted the couple in front of them who inadvertently bumped the couple in front of them. It was like a line of dominoes being pushed over.
Seconds later a full-scale fight had started.
In the middle of this fracas was a bewildered looking mother-in-law peering around and muttering about the terrible behavior of foreigners. Two of the police officers that ploughed in to restore order were armed with very large semi-automatic pistols so I decided against jumping in to push her in front of a swinging fist and edged to the immigration window instead.
Eventually things clamed down in the arrivals hall and we managed to leave the airport to get a taxi.
My Portuguese isn’t that bad so you would think it reasonable for your reporter to sort out luggage, price and associated details.
Wrong.
Mother-in-law insisted that she would take control and performed her own particular version of conversing in a foreign language. This consists of thrusting her face about two inches from that of the person with whom she wishes to talk and then screaming at them in English with her arms flapping around like a demented swan.
I was delighted when the driver looked her up and down like she’d fallen out of a sheep’s arsehole and responded in perfect English:
“Do you need a hospital or something?”
We eventually arrived at our destination and began unpacking. After a leisurely hour of getting organized and grabbing a beer or two I pulled on my Bermuda shorts and headed for the pool. You may think this was revolting image but believe me, when I got there and found myself facing a mother-in-law in a bikini; it put things into a very, very different perspective. And this was just the first day.
I haven’t eaten prunes since.
Understandably changing the subject, I’ve discovered why I’ve been unable to enter any of the freerolls on my usual site.
They’ve effectively stopped them!
I wonder whom the genius was who figured that one out. I can almost visualize the marketing meeting when this blinding flash of brilliance hit them…”I know, we’ll reduce the amount of prospective players and see how much money we can reduce our profits by!”. Clearly, the more people who play freeroll tournaments, the more likely they are to stay at that site and invest cash, so what’s the point of reducing potential sources of income? I guess you find donkeys in all walks of life.
There is still a $50 player points freeroll (not technically free) every day so I shall try to make sure I’m sat in front of the computer at the relevant time tomorrow.
Option two would of course be to change sites and start from scratch again.
The bad news in this scheme being that this diary will carry on for a lot longer and you guys will have to suffer more of my marginal sense of humour.
In the meantime, while I make my decision of whether I should transfer to a new site, the mother-in-law and Mrs. Snowman are deciding where to drag me on holiday. I have only two stipulations. Firstly it must be somewhere that’s speaks English and secondly it’s got to be somewhere so cold that mother-in-law has to wear at least three layers of clothing.
Starting bank: $0
Current bank: $1.76