Here we go again. Granny creeps to this school no less unwillingly than any schoolboy… but she KNOWS she’ll be glad when she’d done it.
The unwillingness is partly exhaustion.
Let’s itemise…
Number of dinners cooked for 13/14 people: 7
Number of punters staying in this house (as opposed to the one in the Casa Rural down the road) so needing breakfast: 5
Number of people over 60: 11
Number of broken limbs: 1 (a wrist belonging to youngest of group; of course; female.)
Humber of trips to clinic on other side of island resulting from above: 2
Number of abusive calls to Granny from above clinic when patient departed before bills etc fully sorted: 2 (sharks all, the private clinics; woman, contrary to instruction, hadn't brought her E111 - so handier, efficient -and free - local hospital no good.)
Number of suggestions from above pair that maybe, since it was dinnertime, Granny's high activity time, they should use a local taxi for these expeditions: 0
Number of falls not leading to broken limbs: 3-4-5-6....uncountable
Number of real enthusiasts for National History (the point of all this): 0
Number of broken pumps for water tank: (ie no water): 1 (enough. Paying guests don't altogether take to being provided with buckets of water with which to flush their loos. Granny can't blame them.)
Number of broken down dishwashers: 1
Number of car problems: 2 (brakes and yet another tyre; the one Mr Handsome announced with pride that he had got cheap..Granny suspected no good would come of this. She was right. She, of course, was the one got dumped by side of road.)
Number of clean underpants worn by Beloved: full complement.... (under threat of Granny emptying his drawers etc, Beloved did it himself, if not quite willingly.)
Number of bottles of wine drunk: Granny lost count but knows it made a good part of the profit. Good.
Number of donkeys acquired: 0 (except human ones.)
This is the outline merely....you can guess.
One part of the guests - 3 irreverent Ulsterwo/men - 2 female, 1 male - dubbed the other part - four of them from the gardening club of an Oxfordshire village - 'the quality.' Much to Granny's delight. They also consumed a lot of the most expensive wine ('we like it before, during and after dinner'..) Good.
All four of 'the Quality' - 3 female, 1 male - 'splendid old buffers' you might say, so long as you don't say the same of Granny - you DARE - were walking-sticked and somewhat unstable, but indefatigable nonetheless; insisting on doing the awkward clamber over the rocks, plus walking sticks, to get to the rock-pools, watched with much anxiety by the horticulturist who was the main teacher, by Beloved, and by Granny tagging along in case of trouble. All got back unscathed, if somewhat querulous about difficulty. (Of which they were warned; but were too indefatigable to take note....) The younger woman who did damage herself fell on a flat safe path. Wouldn't you know it.
The weather fortunately was spectacularly good. Despite complaints about difficult paths, about having to stay elsewhere, ('they don't have mirrors/shelves in the showers, etc...) about the awfulness of the charter flight out (can't help that; Granny and Beloved know the awfulness all too well) a good time seems to have been had by all.
So now you know. That's it. Granny will spare you such details as the nightly menus. She hopes you are grateful.
Oh and by the way; Granny emerging from her Spanish class yesterday, down in the main resort, was confronted by large numbers of not very obviously Irish tourists wearing green scarves, green t-shirts, orange wigs with green caps above, etc, etc. ''What...??" 'St Patrick's Day', said one of her fellow pupils. Not quite like her own dear 'Quality' - all 'awfully jolly' and 'thanks for my din dins' (really) whom she cannot quite imagine agreeing to fake orange wigs and lurid green anything. Though she'd love to try.
It's called island life. Really.
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