Hey, I wonder if I could fit my entire body inside a suitcase?

You know when you tell people you’re going on holiday, and they jokingly say, “Oh, I’m jealous: is there room for me in your suitcase?!”

(It’s just occurred to me that it might just be me who gets those comments, because I seem to get ALL the strange comments from The Others. Anyway, people say that to me: enough said.)

When I was a little girl, I used to take everything people said to me totally literally, and I was always really confused by this comment, because PEOPLE CAN’T GO IN SUITCASES, D’UH! And while I’m on the subject, no, I CAN’T “bring the weather back with me”, because YOU CAN’T PUT WEATHER IN YOUR SUITCASE, EITHER, CAN YOU? Yeah, I spent a LOT of time being confused as a child. Other comments that really bothered me, due to my habit of taking things literally:

[icon size=”18″ icon=”icon-rhomb” display=”true” ][/icon] The time my mum told me my grandparents were “over the moon” with their new car, and I burst into tears on the spot, because how would I ever see them if they’d gone over the MOON?

[icon size=”18″ icon=”icon-rhomb” display=”true” ][/icon] The time the headteacher of my school told my mum, in my hearing, that she felt I “needed to be stretched”. She meant it in the academic sense, but I immediately started to imagine myself on some kind of medieval rack, being literally stretched, and my mum had to spend the rest of the day assuring me that my height was totally normal, and that no one would be attempting to make me taller.

Oh, the innocence and abject terror of childhood!

Anyway, so far no one has asked if there’s room for them in my suitcase on our upcoming holiday (The answer is “NO”, by the way. Because I have to fit approximately 20 thousand dresses and twice that number of shoes in there, so, you know, get your own suitcase.), but unfortunately British Airways managed to destroy my existing suitcase on during our trip to California last year, which meant it’s had to be replaced. It was a bit of a bummer, really, because that suitcase was brand new and on its inaugural trip, so thanks for that, B.A., you owe me one. (No, literally: you owe me one suitcase. When do I get it?) When Terry got the old case down from the attic, ready to take its final journey to the skip (I mean, I’m saying this like it ain’t no thang, but you all know I get attached to things, right? Red Suitcase, I barely knew you, but I will miss you forever, not even joking.) he was all, “Hey, why don’t we see if you can get inside the suitcase?”

This would be the suitcase.

Well, I laughed, and turned back to my important blogging work, but it turned out he was serious, and he ACTUALLY wanted to know if he could fit my body inside a suitcase. Aaaaaannnnd I have literally just this second realised how totally chilling this is, and that Terry is obviously planning something terrible, isn’t he? OH. MY. GOD. I mean, I just thought this would be a light-hearted blog post that most people would just skim over, because who wants to see a woman in a suitcase, but it looks like it now holds important clues to what’s probably about to happen to me. I really hope someone out there is reading this: if you are, I’M RELYING ON YOU. You, and you alone, will have to join the dots if I suddenly go missing, OK? Phew.

SEND HELP.

Anyway, at the time I didn’t realise he was planning to kill me: I just thought it would be kinda funny to see if I could do it, so…

Yeah, just about. This post will also be a lasting testament to the fact that you can talk me into just about anything, huh? Now let us never speak of it again.

Anyway, as I said, I had to buy a new suitcase for this upcoming trip, which we finally booked last week. Now, finding a holiday is obviously a pretty fun task to set yourself, but as we’re trying to do this one on as low a budget as possible, it also wasn’t easy. We wanted to find something cheap n’ cheerful, and, as surprising though it might sound, we’re actually not all that fussy when it comes to accommodation: or not as fussy as some of the people who write reviews on Trip Advisor, anyway.

For us, a hotel is really just a base, and a place to sleep. I mean, if it can be a luxury base, and a totally awesome place to sleep, then so much the better, but like I said, we’re doing this on a budget, so we were willing to consider anything, as long as it was:

a) Clean

b) Quiet

and

c) Had miniature ponies available for guests to play with.

And, to be honest, on our budget, we were willing to compromise on the minature ponies, too, which just left us with:

a) clean

b) quiet

c) no dead people by the pool

With the help of our old friend Trip Advisor, we finally managed to come up with a shortlist of three hotels/apartments:

01. The one with an Irish bar that isn’t a REAL Irish bar (probably because, you know, it’s not in Ireland), and not much entertainment for very young babies, so if you have a new baby, you have to entertain it yourself. Someone should really tell people about this before they have babies: I bet a lot wouldn’t bother if they knew they’d be stuck with them ALL the time, even when they’re trying to have a quiet drink in the Irish/Spanish bar, FFS.

02. The one where you can stay “half bored”, but there are no pens available at reception. Can you even BELIEVE there being no pens available at reception? Because I cannot believe in a reception that has no pens. I mean, REALLY.

03. The one where most of the reviews were in French. My French is a little rusty, but I think there was something about a chicken? *insert Gallic shrug*

After giving it a lot of consideration (and, OK, a couple of glasses of wine), we decided to go with option 1. I know it’s not going to be perfect, but I guess we’ll just avoid taking any babies with us, and try to lower our Irish bar-related expectations (Although, to be honest, if you can’t find a good Irish bar in Spain, I don’t know where you CAN find one?), and make the best of it. Number 2 seemed OK, but we weren’t keen on the location, and the whole “pens” thing was a deal-breaker, really, and number 3 was a private rental, which I wasn’t 100% convinced would actually exist when we got to it. So number 1 it was.

Oh, it’s also the hotel in which one reviewer said that all inclusive was “a misdemeanor”. I cannot WAIT to find out what that’s about…