Holland: One day coach trip
I remember my first trip to Holland via Calais with my parents in the 60s. It was a one day coach trip all inclusive to look at the flowering tulips. Mum has insisted, Dad and I gave in, and marked up the day as lost away from feet up in front of the box.
Two things I remember about the trip - flowers wasn’t one of them. We three were sitting at the back of the coach. The so called motorways at that time where sections of concrete slabs with tar in the gaps between them. In hot weather, as with this trip, the tar would swell up above the surface of the concrete.
As the axis of the rear wheels being quite away ‘up front’ from our position and physics being was it is, the hop/bounce of the coach at the edge of each slab was so extreme that our heads were getting uncomfortably close to the roof of said transport device (no seat belts of course), not to mention the pseudo seasickness without a drop of water in sight!
The second memory was another first, it concerned horse meat in a French restaurant in Calais which was a hot topic of discussion between my parents on our return after they realised what we had eaten. I remember nothing of the ‘act of’, only the aftermath of heated words. I have never been "active" in eating said meat; only in resent times a possible "passive" confrontation with it.
[Ed: He’s going on about the latest food scandals here at the time of writing this up.]
Two things I remember about the trip - flowers wasn’t one of them. We three were sitting at the back of the coach. The so called motorways at that time where sections of concrete slabs with tar in the gaps between them. In hot weather, as with this trip, the tar would swell up above the surface of the concrete.
As the axis of the rear wheels being quite away ‘up front’ from our position and physics being was it is, the hop/bounce of the coach at the edge of each slab was so extreme that our heads were getting uncomfortably close to the roof of said transport device (no seat belts of course), not to mention the pseudo seasickness without a drop of water in sight!The second memory was another first, it concerned horse meat in a French restaurant in Calais which was a hot topic of discussion between my parents on our return after they realised what we had eaten. I remember nothing of the ‘act of’, only the aftermath of heated words. I have never been "active" in eating said meat; only in resent times a possible "passive" confrontation with it.
[Ed: He’s going on about the latest food scandals here at the time of writing this up.]
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