I was trepidatious about this holiday before we flew out. Having somehow managed to injure myself consistently for pretty much 3 months it was difficult not to wonder what else could go wrong. Fate seemed to be laughing in the face of my attempts at positivity. When my right hip was injured I got into cycling and swimming. "Maybe it's a good thing" I would tell myself - "I'll be a more well rounded athlete now because of that injury." I had a brief period of feeling no injury just before and over Xmas at my sister's. Returning to Edinburgh I anticipated I'd be able to run although I was dreading how much fitness I would have inevitably lost and how much work I'd have to do just to get back to base-line. I needn't have worried because I injured the other hip pretty much right away and running was back off the table. I had about a day of stewing about it and then I jollied up and went back to the pool. "Maybe it's good" I told myself - "I'm enjoying all this swimming and my upper body's looking stronger". Then I took my bike out on an icy day and hit the deck and bashed my stupid ribs with my stupid camera.
"Maybe it's fine" I told myself and went off for a swim two days later. Stupid arse. It wasn't too bad in the pool but afterwards something horrific happened down my right side - the bottom of my ribs and the top of my stomach kind of swoll up. Getting into bed was a catastrophe. Then I'd lie there dreading the next time I'd need to get up to pee because to do that I'd have to disturb my bastard ribs. All the time I thought maybe there was a rib poking in my liver and that I was maybe dying but just kind of hoped not. There was no way I was going to go up to A & E and endure a long wait in a plastic seat and getting the evil eye from the receptionists, so I would just need to die if that was what was going to happen. The saddest thing would be that Peter would have narrowly missed out on getting a payout of a 'death in service' award from the NHS because I'd retired.
Anyway, I didn't die, but that was the end of swimming. Such a shame because there's a big outdoor somewhat heated artificial lake in Puerto de la Cruz where we were going and I would have really liked to have gone and spent a bit of time there.
Before flying my main concerns, apart from filling out all the damn government forms and getting them printed out and booking day 2 Covid tests and all the extra hoops that have been put in place, were trying not to damage myself and wondering how in hell I was going to hump my big ten ton North Face bag to the airport. Peter gets in a sweat on principle about not getting an airport taxi - I might have fought him claiming special circumstances, but I googled the prices and it turns out I am also too much of a cheapskate to get a taxi. So instead I managed to make my bags the lightest I ever had. I only took 3 books. I only took 2 pairs of trainers. My bag was way under the limit. The difficulties were all in the transitions - getting the bag off the floor and onto my back. Once it was on my back that was fine - it was just any twisting and heaving that was a problem.
Okay, fast-forwards - we got away with it. The flight was a little hell as it turned out we were sharing it with a hen party and some groups of - well are they soccer casuals? I don't know what to call them. Anyway there were maybe 15 passengers who had all been drinking spirits before the flight at 8.25am and snuck vodka on the plane in Pepsi bottles so the cabin crew had to confiscate them. 5000 years ago when I was young I have been known to like a party too but these ones were not nice. They were deliberately being arseholes to the cabin crew who were duty bound to try to get them to sit down and put their masks on.. I was scared the big fat fumbling idiot who was boring the poor cabin crew lady with how he was really a nice guy was going to fall on my damn ribs and ruin my holiday. Me and PB just zoned out to the best of our ability until it was over. As our recent plane-mates made off in the direction of Tenerife Sur and we headed for the North I wished for them to have the killer hangovers they deserved with maybe a keen sense of shame and regret to go along-side.
But what on earth do you do on holiday if you can't run or swim (and you're too scared to cycle on the roads because they are fecking full on)? Well it turns out you can go for walks. Peter was very patient with all my limits and disabilities. In truth he knew fine if he wanted to go and do something more solid in the way of a day's adventure he was welcome to, but apart from going to the track a couple of times over the course of 2 weeks, he never did. He loves a potter with a camera.
It turns out that going away on holiday and not being able to do very much is actually quite relaxing. We dreamed up mid-sized adventures for ourselves on a few days interspersed with more local days. Wandering about in the sunshine there was just so much to see. and we easily spent hours and hours wandering around and taking photos. Peter was much more active in deciding in advance what he wanted to see and going looking for it (butterflies, birds) and I was more interested in just seeing what came to us. Oddly then I tended to spot the things Peter was after when I wasn't really looking for them.
We had access to a small selection of Spanish tv channels that held no interest so we generally ate and looked at photos and listened to music in the evening, Peter swigging three glasses of wine to my one. I had the more powerful 'device' having brought my lap-top and I somehow got control of the music. Peter suffers along but YouTube has sussed me out and no matter what we started out listening to sooner or later it would put on Radiohead, New Order or the Cure. After a while he'd raise an objection. He likes music for hibernating to though. It was hard to find a middle ground. I had happened upon Bill Evans a while back and listening to his music proved to be possible for both of us. I remarked to Peter that although his music was fairly upbeat there was an underlying note of melancholy and I bet he'd had a sad life - so I had a bit of a google and kind of regretted it as Wikipedia described a short life marred by an abusive, drunken father, drug addiction, the loss of his friend in a car crash and his brother to suicide and then his own death at just 51.
Wine and Jazz evenings are good anyway. I'd recommend them.
Another real feature of the holiday was the fantastic shower. We had one of these showers with a huge great big head and strong water pressure that just knocked all the thoughts from your head and tensions from your body. As our shower spits out a weedy amount of tepid water - fine in the summer but chilly in winter, this shower was a big hit with the team and we were probably the cleanest we've ever been.
On top of that I got into having marathon sleeping sessions where I dreamt long complicated and involving dreams every night. Most diverting. It only really got properly light at about 8.30am so there was no hurry to be up and out.
So it was a good holiday. Who knew that not doing very much of anything at all can be so diverting? I think I probably used to know it but had forgotten.
I would still like to go back and be able to use the track and the big, big outdoor swimming pool though. Maybe next time.
