Doug's Personal Blog

Always take a good book to read.

Actually, I originally thought this recommendation was going to be the continuation of a running joke from previous holidays. I always think :- 'Mmmm, if I have a whole week of nothing planned, I could catch up on my Oracle reading list'. I pack several books, most of which are not about Oracle but there is always at least one. Once I'm on holiday, I sometimes devour one or two of the non-Oracle books (but never all of them) and barely touch anything Oracle-related.

One of this year's running jokes was to say regularly 'Perhaps I should read my indexing book', so I had planned a 'stunt shot' of me reading the book. Then something strange happened. I got a little bored on Thursday, picked it up and then couldn't put it down! I've only read about a quarter of it, so now isn't the time for a detailed review, but I'm really enjoying this one and found myself making little notes constantly for a future review. This is my kind of book. On that basis, thanks to Thomas P. for pointing me in it's direction and Marco for putting a pre-holiday reminder in my head.

P.S. I couldn't resist including one of the many Pineapple Trees on our little private island

In my experience, all of the best holidays require a running joke or two. I don't mean an entertaining anecdote about the exercising masses, but something that crops up early in the holiday and provides amusement during any slightly dull moments.

There were two candidates this time. The first was that we purchased a 'Little Lost Bear' on the plane going out. The joke here is that he looked insufferably cute with his hands over his eyes, as displayed in the catalogue,

but when you take his hands off his eyes he's the most obnoxious, self-righteous cuddly toy yet.

He's full of stories (invented, we suspect) about his jet-setting previous life, spent the whole holiday criticising us and our lifestyle and frankly he's a pain in the *rse. The boys are not happy now that we're back! He's been expelled from the comfy seat but appears to enjoy his perceived superiority as a result.

The other running joke will possibly only work for Andy C. Mads and I were discussing Joy Division on the plane out, probably prompted by the fact that we were going to miss seeing Control until we got back (but Andy helped out with a review here). Anyway, I'd had a couple of beers by this point and became a little passionate about my school days knowledge and love of certain Joy Division singles, notably Transmission. Part of my defence of how much I liked them was that I know the lyrics, so could sing it for Mads if she wanted (on the plane) and that I could even imitate Curtis' unique dance style. She declined my generous offer but there were several inappropriate moments over the course of the next 7 days when I would wave my arms around madly, singing 'Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio'. I even offered to go up on stage, during an interval in an enjoyable display of Greek dancing, to share my passion with a larger audience.

I hasten to add these moments didn't last long once Mads intervened and that I promise you I'm not a boorish Brit holiday maker, just a happy man who likes to share his passions (or something like that).