Beer Diary Part 3

Well, we're up to the weekend of my holiday, and the drama starts in earnest with a change in the weather and a little over-indulgence!



Sat 2nd July 2005. Again, when I woke up, the weather was disappointing – in fact, it varied between tipping it down and just drizzling. This would turn out to be the worst day for weather. So we went to Knightshayes for the day. Knightshayes (pronouced "Nights Hays") is a Victorian stately home, with a large estate and gardens to go with it. It was built by a Dorset industrialist, in the Gothic style. It’s a very odd look, really, the Victorian idea of a mediaeval manor. Big and bold, with Gothic lines, but just not looking right somehow! Dad was goggle-eyed at the Victorian walled kitchen garden they’d got. It was huge; it was easily much bigger than our whole street (houses and gardens included). I looked and looked for a “pick your own strawberries” sign, but there was none to be found, despite rows and rows of the plants. Damn them!

We got back to the hotel, and to my surprise and delight, I found a gorgeous large black cat hanging around outside my room. I didn’t know if he was supposed to be in the hotel or not, so I scooped him up and carried him downstairs to ask one of the owners if he belonged to the hotel. Turns out ‘Dave the Cat’ splits his time living between one of their old B&Bs, another cottage in the village, and the Dolphin, so after showing him to mom and dad I let him down in the foyer. He rubbed my leg and wandered off vaguely outside and down the road.

We had dinner at the Pizza place. The young waiter was blatantly checking me out – I was too busy trying to figure out how old he was to be too interested. He was cute, but looked about 16-18. Meh. I had a lovely lasagne, though I couldn’t finish it all. In fact, I don’t think I managed to finish one meal I had there, let a lone have dessert (they have Tira Misu. I LOVE Tira Misu. It’s a gorgeous pudding! Do you think I got to have any? Did I heck!) I made two bloody stupid mistakes during dinner though. First – one second after the young waiter told me my lasagne dish was extremely hot, I put my middle fingers on it to re-position it, instead of using my cutlery. Fortunately, the waiter didn’t see, but even though I pulled away immediately (he hadn’t been kidding) the heat and pain in my fingers grew and grew over the next hour, and I spent a lot of time with my hands around various glasses of ice-cold water (my dad had to drink two so we could keep asking for fresh ones when the ice melted).
Second - I had the brilliant idea of having red wine instead of white. Big mistake. Big, huge, enormous mistake. But I didn’t realise how much straight away, and joined mom and dad in the bar at the Dolphin for the usual after-dinner drinks (cider for mom and me, lager for dad. I may have had a Jack Daniels as well. And a Tia Maria. I was trying to knock myself out, as my fingers were really sore – enough to keep me awake).

I turned 'Live 8' on just in time to see Bon Jovi perform in coverage from the Philadelphia concert. Yay! I tried writing for a bit, only to discover that, not only did the only pen I could find not want to work, but also my handwriting was appalling. Which really doesn’t matter, because I have a feeling that, even if I could read what I’d written that night, I still wouldn’t be able to make any sense out of my alcohol-induced babbling! The pain in my fingers meant I didn’t get to sleep very quickly, despite having had quite enough to drink to zonk me out.

Sun 3rd July 2005. Woke up and oh dear. I had a MAGNIFICENT hangover. Felt sick, stomach ached, head pounded and spun by turns. I was going nowhere, not to breakfast, and not out that morning. And would you believe it, the weather was gorgeous. Blasted GORGEOUS. Hot, sunny, clear blue skies, a beautiful day. It was the perfect day to spend on the beach. And I missed almost half of it, because I had bloody drunk too much. I felt such a prize idiot; it was unbelievable. The only comfort (if comfort you can call it) was that I wasn’t preventing mom and dad from doing anything, because dad was ill too (with a bad neck I hasten to add, not from a hangover).

My fingers had blistered, and mom (bless her) got me some Solarcaine from the Pharmacy. It’s for sunburn mostly, but you can spray it on any burns, and it’s really cold and got a local anaesthetic in it, which was such a relief. I managed to emerge for lunch, which consisted of a hot dog on the beach. After that, I made the seemingly-suicidal decision to go out in a small motor boat with my dad, like we do every year (as many times as we have the opportunity to) in order to go out into the bay and do a spot of mackerel fishing, and just enjoy being on the sea. Only it was incredibly rough out; although the weather was hot, it was windy. But I was damned if I was going to lose this opportunity to a sick stomach and choppy seas – it might be the only chance I got this whole year.

It was the roughest sea I’ve ever been out in. Usually even if it’s rough farther out, in the bay it can be relied on to be pretty calm. But not today, oh no. Not on the day my stomach is recovering from a regrettable evening’s worth of drink. The boat rolled and pitched and heaved, the waves were huge, and a couple of times I was worried we might go over. I few years ago, I’d have thought it was brilliant, but being a little older and a lot more aware of the dangers, I found it less enjoyable than I would have in years passed. But I still enjoyed it, and miracle of miracles, my stomach settled down and felt better than it had done on land. We didn’t catch anything, but that’s because it was far too rough to go out very far. I enjoyed the challenge of steering the boat so as to avoid the worst movements, and I thought I was rather good at it!!

A huge tasty plaice in the Dolphin Restaurant helped to ease my stomach, although I took it easy on the wine, and only had J2Os afterwards! The fish at the Dolphin has always been a treat. If the plaice isn’t big enough (i.e. doesn’t completely fill the large plate from one end to the other) then they give you two and a half!). Unfortunately I had to decide to have a Kaluha Surprise for dessert, which gave me another stomach-ache, this time for eating too much.