Holiday

I've just come home from a family holiday in South Devon. We stayed in an Airbnb and hired a little sailing boat. The boat was a joy and the house was like a brilliant scavenger hunt. If you looked hard enough you could find almost anything you wanted. Crabbing equipment, camping stove, parasol, tablecloth, spare light bulbs, weighing scales, board games... There were 2 exceptions. We never found the salt and pepper (although we all think that it was in there somewhere and we just hadn't located it) and there were no towels.

The main theme of the holiday was not being dry, despite staying over mid-summer's day during a heatwave. The house is built into the shady side of a hill beside a creek, it doesn't have good ventilation and everything associated with it is slightly damp. We all thought we might catch mildew or mould when we went to sleep. After going and buying a towel my sister-in-law had a bath and the bathroom ended up so steamy and covered in condensation that she was actually unable to get herself dry afterwards.

Some of the roving on our little boat had gone loose and water was constantly weeping inwards – to the extent that the owner had fitted an automatic electric bilge pump and a big battery to keep the thing afloat when it was on the mooring. It worked perfectly and fitted in nicely with the theme of our holiday.

Richard "Poacher's Pocket" B