Sentimental Journey Part 3

Susan and John’s List of Holiday Denials.

The people of Poole and the surrounding areas are clipped in their manner and anxious to inform you about the limits of their service up front, with an eagerness which could look to the untrained eye like rudeness. Here are a list occasions where our outrageous requests for service were denied:

1)      Day trip to Swanage by ferry: Denied.

Not a good one to start with this one as it isn’t really health and safety gone mad. You could actually drown as there were high winds.  Instead of going to Swanage then we went on a tour around the Islands and got a commentary from the captain about which sporting celebs owned which mansions in Sand Banks, including the trials and tribulations of Harry Rednapp’s property portfolio: “He bought that house for eleven million, sold it for eight and picked up his latest for three and, for my money, it’s the best of the bunch!” I also liked “There’s Geoff Boycott’s house  (darkly) before it was taken off him.”

2)      The Museum can’t do any “drinks with hot milk in them”. Can I have just a black coffee? *eyes me warily* “Yeah, go on then. Alright.”

3)      Want to buy salad and pies from the deli at five past four in the afternoon. There is cellophane over the salad and a cloth over the pies. Managed, after haggling, to get a pie each and we were allowed one salad item because the server “didn’t want to contaminate another spoon”. I eschewed the salad. What time does the salad bar close? I ask as we leave. Four, she tells me. We pop in the next day at twenty to four – the cloth is already over the pies.

4)      Following on from this we went to get some shopping next door. But the fire alarm went off and we were evacuated. Shopping denied.

5)      We waited forty minutes for a bus to Sand Banks. Bored, we decide to visit the Lighthouse Arts Centre which is just over the road instead of hanging around the bus station. The Lighthouse Arts Centre is closed on a Monday. It is a Monday. We return to the bus station, denied.

6)      We attempt to buy fish and chips on a Sunday in Poole not realising that the shops shut at four. They don’t even have the excuse of religious fundamentalism like they do back home – these people are basically pirates! You’d think they’d be cool. But no, fish and chips denied.