The Monday Musings: A Much Belated Honeymoon

As our regular readers will know Dom and I don’t always have the best of luck when it comes to our attempts at doing something romantic together. First came years of a long distance relationship in which my attempts at simple gestures such as sending flowers ended with long walks across town for Dom to pick up a failed delivery that had, by now, wilted entirely. There was also my famous attempt to surprise Dom by turning up on her doorstep, only to find out that she’d gone away for a few days and not told me about it. Next came years of dates being interfered with by our always conflicting work schedules, a holiday in which Dom got stung by a Jellyfish and I got an ant stuck in my eye, a romantic proposal for which my plans had to be changed 3 times as Dom managed to accidentally throw up barriers to scupper my attempts, a wedding in a tropical paradise where the authorities had decided to choose that week to dig up the promenade and the weather had waited 3 years without raining in order to bestow a mighty storm just on our wedding day, in fact one powerful enough to also close the airport and cause some serious problems for one or two of our guests. In short, whenever we plan a romantic endeavour we pretty much fear for our lives.

Indeed despite neither of us being in any way superstitious our romantic history (did I mention we accidentally set fire to our house on valentines night?) has been such a catalogue of disasters that we believe we qualify as genuine scientific evidence for the existence of curses. In fact one of our fellow sceptic friends wrote a wedding card to us in which he sarcastically mocked the idea of the curse only to find that as he wrote it his pen broke spectacularly spilling ink all over him and his clothes.

So as we planned to finally take the proper honeymoon we were unable to take immediately following our wedding (although we did take a lovely mini-moon to the lake district… in which our car got a puncture… as did our spare tyre) we were somewhat fearful of what disasters might befall us. Had the curse merely been biding it’s time? Was it simply teasing us with these minor (major) inconveniences we had so far suffered only to bestow its ultimate pièce de résistance upon us on our anniversary?

We of course took all of the proper precautions – travel insurance, life insurance, hazmat beachwear… we even played it safe and booked a five star hotel in the hopes that at worse it could turn out to be 2 star… I mean if we’d booked a 3 star place we’d probably end up in a tent somewhere in the arctic circle. We even weren’t particularly picky in where we went in order to avoid disappointment when it inevitably became unavailable. We did everything we could to limit the impact the curse could wield upon our romantic getaway, and whilst having to bring that fire extinguisher and oxygen tank with us definitely hit our luggage allowance pretty hard, so far things have been alarmingly smooth.

I write this post from our balcony in a very genuinely five star apartment having had probably the easiest travel experience either of us had ever encountered in getting here. We reached the airport without any trouble and passed through security without having to queue, we were able to sit and relax with a cup of tea and a nice meal before boarding a very smooth flight which arrived ahead of schedule, we reached the arrivals hall to find our luggage sweeping around to meet us in a piece of timing so perfect it was just unreal, there a friendly shuttle bus driver met us and transported us to our rather beautiful hotel, where the staff told us where to find the breakfast we didn’t even think was included before  picking up our luggage and driving us around to our luxurious apartment in a golf buggy. Our hotel room has been fantastic, the facilities of the hotel are amazing and there seem to be very few guests around meaning that the private beach really is very private. I was even able to find proper tea facilities before heading to the bar to buy some very cheap beer. Put simply it has, so far, been perfect.

And that is why I felt it necessary to write this post, because for a holiday to have run this smoothly for us and to have been this uncannily idillic, the curse must be planning something truly spectacular for us as, say what you like about the curse, it’s not without its sense of irony. In fact even as I write this closing paragraph a flock of large seagulls have landed rather close by and each one is staring rather menacingly at me. And so, dear readers, if we don’t make it out of this luxury honeymoon alive, we just want you to know it’s been a pleasure writing for you.

Adeus meus amigos