I've had enough

[AlanHo]

Over the last two cold and snowy weeks, I have been reading a book titled "Grumpy Old Men - A daily chronicle of life for the terminally irritable". It is amusing but has not done my mood much good.

It has reminded me that I have got increasingly grumpy about the political goings-on, the financial crisis, celebrity worship and the honours list, the weather, the council tax hike, the judicial system, MP's fiddles, immigration, traffic congestion, Chelsea tractors, binge drinkers, crap TV programs, bankers bonuses, retirement pensions, the yob culture............ and a lot more.

So bugger it - I need a break - and we have booked a last minute holiday to Tenerife. We fly tomorrow and will get away from it all for a week. No TV, no newspapers, no news, no snow and probably no internet.

One last grump - the airline (Thos Cook) applied a charge of £15 per head for "Late Booking". It used to be cheaper if you left it until the last minute - but not any more.

[artist]

Have a nice time you miserable old man................ :P

[andsome]

Have a great time you old grot bag, and DON'T even think about taking a lap top. Don't fall into the volcano.

[catgate]

You will probably wind up with a group of Grumpy Oldies who have got so fed up of it all that they have flown off to Tenerife on last minute flights to get away from it all.

By the way it has been devalued and is now called Eightpointfiverife.

[andsome]

Thinking about your post Alan, there is NO WAY that I would have accepted a surcharge for a late booking. Whenever we have had flying holidays in the past we have always expected and received a discount for a late booking. After all it is in their interest to sell all the holidays and have no vacancies left. We also expect and get a discount for holidays in GB when we are offered late bookings.

[AlanHo]

Thinking about your post Alan, there is NO WAY that I would have accepted a surcharge for a late booking. Whenever we have had flying holidays in the past we have always expected and received a discount for a late booking. After all it is in their interest to sell all the holidays and have no vacancies left. We also expect and get a discount for holidays in GB when we are offered late bookings.

I challenge you to beat the current system - if you stick to those guns there is NO WAY you will get on the plane. We wanted to go to a particular place at a specific time and found that Thos Cook offered a package much cheaper than any other travel company - even compared with booking flights and hotel speparately on the internet. We did get a discount of £80 - but there was no way they would cancel the late booking surcharge - it was a jobsworth situation.

[andsome]

Enjoy it anyway.

[Gandalph]

I hope you both have a great week Alan. Try not to forget my stick of rock. :D

[Irene]

Have a great time Alan, I'll miss you.

Been at work all week, so I've not been responding as usual......

[Gandalph]

Have a great time Alan, I'll miss you.

Been at work all week, so I've not been responding as usual......

I thought it had been a quiet week on here. :lol:

[andsome]

Have a great time Alan, I'll miss you.

Been at work all week, so I've not been responding as usual......

Four letter words again.

[Gandalph]

Have a great time Alan, I'll miss you.

Been at work all week, so I've not been responding as usual......

Four letter words again.

Totally banned on this Forum that word. :lol:

[Dencandy]

While you're there, Alan, gaze at the ocean, and up at the stars at night, and refect on the infinity of it all.

What does our brief period on this speck of dust mean? Is it worth getting grumpy about our little trials and tribulations?

Does the universe care? It just sits there staring back at us expressionlessly.

Enjoy.

Or something like that.

[artist]

While you're there, Alan, gaze at the ocean, and up at the stars at night, and refect on the infinity of it all.

What does our brief period on this speck of dust mean? Is it worth getting grumpy about our little trials and tribulations?

Does the universe care? It just sits there staring back at us expressionlessly.

Enjoy.

Or something like that.

Takes a lot of years for some people to find the time to just sit and reflect. I often sit and think of the real priorities in life. There is always something to be thankful for (in the words of Pollyanna...) :)

[Gandalph]

The Moon's orbit takes it 38 mm (or 3.8cm) away from the Earth each year. That's three times the distance of my wife's hand from my wallet. I often reflect on that. :D

[catgate]

The Moon's orbit takes it 38 mm (or 3.8cm) away from the Earth each year. That's three times the distance of my wife's hand from my wallet. I often reflect on that. :D

That is a very significant and exciting thing you have come up with.

We all know how cold the surface of the moon is. The moon absorbs the earths heat and reflects its cold back on to the earth. By moving away it is taking longer for the heat to get there and also longer for the cold to get back. It is obviously this that is fooling "the experts" into think we are being subjected to global warming and they are blaming it on CO2.

Avogadro had a "hypothesis". Gandalph has a "Principle". How long before "Gandalph's Law" enters science?

[doug]

Bit too soon after being proposed so it will probably only go down in the science history as Gandalf's Rule for the present. However, if additional evidence is provided the Gandalf's Rule could be elevated to the status of a Law

[catgate]

Bit too soon after being proposed so it will probably only go down in the science history as Gandalf's Rule for the present. However, if additional evidence is provided the Gandalf's Rule could be elevated to the status of a Law

I was never really fully "au fait" with the official protocol, doug.

[AlanHo]

So here we are in Los Christianos, Tenerife, after a Thomas Cook flight from Birmingham which left dead on time and arrived 10 minutes early. The hire car was exactly as ordered and we had an uneventful drive to the hotel which is very nice. Our room is comfortable, spacious and has a glorious sea view from the large balcony. However, things are not going well, I am still reading my "Grumpy Old Men" book but have found it somewhat difficult to get in the mood to get into the swing of it and have failed to find lots of things to grump about.

We came to Tenerife expecting the weather to be a little better than the UK - but it has turned out to be absolutely awful.

The sun is blazing down out of a bright blue sky which is decorated with a few powder puff clouds which break up the monotony. The temperature in the shade is 23 centigrade, I have been forced to leave my vest off and all bodily crevices are permanently sweaty. The beer is served in glasses straight out of the freezer and the food is very tempting. It is the stuff that sun worshiping, boozy, greedy buggers would consider to be heaven - but it is pure hell for a grumpy old man looking for things to moan about.

I would therefore not recommend Tenerife as a suitable holiday destination at this time of the year. Never has snow, rain, floods and Gordon Brown´s England seemed more appealing

I really have had enough

You don´t know how lucky you are.

[Gandalph]

I could put forward a fifteen page letter outlining "Electro-magnetic Inductance" and see if that spurs them on to quicken their pace up.

[Gandalph]

So here we are in Los Christianos, Tenerife, after a Thomas Cook flight from Birmingham which left dead on time and arrived 10 minutes early. The hire car was exactly as ordered and we had an uneventful drive to the hotel which is very nice. Our room is comfortable, spacious and has a glorious sea view from the large balcony. However, things are not going well, I am still reading my "Grumpy Old Men" book but have found it somewhat difficult to get in the mood to get into the swing of it and have failed to find lots of things to grump about.

We came to Tenerife expecting the weather to be a little better than the UK - but it has turned out to be absolutely awful.

The sun is blazing down out of a bright blue sky which is decorated with a few powder puff clouds which break up the monotony. The temperature in the shade is 23 centigrade, I have been forced to leave my vest off and all bodily crevices are permanently sweaty. The beer is served in glasses straight out of the freezer and the food is very tempting. It is the stuff that sun worshiping, boozy, greedy buggers would consider to be heaven - but it is pure hell for a grumpy old man looking for things to moan about.

I would therefore not recommend Tenerife as a suitable holiday destination at this time of the year. Never has snow, rain, floods and Gordon Brown´s England seemed more appealing

I really have had enough

You don´t know how lucky you are.

What a shame there is no snow and the weather is so hot.

We normally stay at the 'Berverley Hills" Hotel when we used to get to Los Christianos. The weather used to be bloody awful there as well. Don't you just hate it when the beer is served ice cold and the Sun is blazing down. Would you like me to send a picture of some snow so you cool down the gonads. :lol:

[andsome]

[artist]

I could use a few of those reasons to moan. :P

[AlanHo]

Bloomin 'eck - it's cold innit.

It was 23 centigrade when we left Tenerife and hovering around freezing when we got off the plane at 11.00 pm.

The holiday was overall most enjoyable - but it started rather badly. We had booked the same hotel we stayed at last year called Sol Princessa Dacil. It's a reasonable 3 star situated in Los Christianos a 2 minute walk from the seafront and has a large car park which avoids the need to drive around the town to find a rare parking space. The food there is quite good - but the restaurant is more like a large works canteen and is very noisy. The hotel was looking very tired since we were last there - but our room was spacious with a separate sitting room and a balcont with a splendid sea view. We arrived on saturday afternoon and enjoyed a long stroll along the sea front before our evening meal, evening musical entertainment and bed.

Sunday was warm and sunny and we spent the dat out and about - returning to the hotel for dinner followed by entertainment consisting of a musical duo, a quiz and.....I hesitate to admit.....Bingo - which I played for the very first time in my life. We had noticed that the main lifts were cordoned off and assumed that they were being maintained over the week-end. We had to use the rather scruffy service lift instead and assumed all would be normal on Monday...it wasn't.

At 8.00 am on Monday we were awoken to the sound of jackhammers and other power tools reverberating through the hotel. It was only then we discovered that they were refurbishing the place from the top floor downwards and were about a third way through the job which is due for completion in May. The service lifts were proving unreliable and we met some folk who were situated on the 14th floor and were having to use the stairs. We were on the 5th floor and that was bad enough.

After breakfast we walked a quarter of a mile up the road to a 4 star hotel we had admired the previous day - took a look around - and booked a room there for the rest of the holiday. We went back, loaded up the car and moved hotels after registering our complaints with the original hotel and advising them we will persue a refund through the booking agent we used.

The second hotel was absolutely super in every possible way - I can thoroughly recommend the Arona Gran Hotel in Los Christianos, Tenerife.

You can see photos and a video of the hotel Here

Another bit of our adventures is that for several months we have had in our possession a 500 Euro note (don't ask!!!) which we had tried to convert to sterling in the UK - but neither my bank, nor my wife's bank or any money exchanger would touch with the proverbial bargepole. We therefore took it with us and intended to get it changed into smaller denomination notes at a local spanish bank. The first bank we went into declined but directed us to another bank who they thought would oblige - but they didn't. The third bank we tried also declined stating they would only accept it if we opened an account there and paid it in. A British expat lady in the adjacent queue overheard the conversation and offered to take it off our hands in exchange for smaller notes because she was depositing a few thousand Euros into her business account and could pay it in. How lucky can you get eh.....problem solved.

The remaining days seem to flash by and we were very lucky with the weather. Luckier than we at first appreciated because on the day we flew home there was a bad weather warning with heavy rain, 60 mph winds and thunderstorms forecast for Sunday and Monday with a sudden drop in temperature to 15 centigrade. The remainder of the week was forecast to be wet and windy so for once we seemed to have picked the right week to be there.

Another thing worth noting is that as usual I hired a car - I like automatics and booked the same type of car as last time we were there - a Citroen C3 auto which had proved to be smooth, relatively quiet, roomy enough for the two of us, quite nippy and fairly frugal on petrol.

This time we were given the latest model - same spec - but a different gearbox. The first car had a conventional auto box with a torque converter - this car had an automated manual box. It was supposed to change gears when required - but only did so when the engine was either screaming at maximum revs or about to judder to a halt - at which point it would lurch into the next higher or lower gear. The gear stick could be used as a sequential changer - so that is what I finished up doing. I understand that for smaller non executive cars most manufacturers are fitting these auto-manual boxes because they are more economical and lose less power than a torque converter auto, The internet is awash with people complaining about these so called auto boxes on a variety of makes and I now know why. Thank goodness my Audi is better equipped.

So now it's back home to normal routines with piles of washing, ironing and domestic chores.

I don't know how I will fill my time though........

[rong]

You don't seem to know how to holiday, you need to get some tips from Doug ;)