The Childfree Life

I'll post a little synopsis of each day, probably include a pic or two as well. Read or ignore.

The flights here were good (well, as good as can be expected), all took off and landed on time, no screaming babies, and only one kiddie meltdown, which was more funny/sad than bothersome, because there's nothing as hilarious as watching a 10yo lose his shit for no apparent reason.

He started with some snapping at his mom as she was trying to get him ready for landing after a 6+ hour flight. He was doing that thing where kids kind of yell through gritted teeth, and after about three of those, he finally let lose with, "LEAVE ME ALONE!!! CAN'T YOU SEE I'M STRESSED OUT?!?!?!" That opened the floodgates and he proceeded to chew out his mom and his older brother.

Can't wait until he grows up and meets the real world.

Once we landed, we picked up the rental car with no fuss, but about five miles down the road, we noticed the fuel gauge and the temp gauge weren't working. Both digital, so maybe a fuse, or worst case, the car was actually not filled with fuel.

We made a planned stop at a motorway services for the worst full English breakfast ever and talked over options. I didn't want to go back to the airport, so we decided to see if the car was actually empty, then stop at the rental car branch in Cheltenham, near where we're staying.

Went out, got in the car, turned it on, and everything was fine. Turns out we were heading west out of the airport, sun was just up, and the sunlight was flooding the cabin of the car and washing out the white lights of the gauges.

First emergency averted. The car does have a nasty rear squeak, though, that's loud enough to be highly annoying.

Got to our hotel about 11:30AM, way too early to check in, but we didn't care, we just wanted to find it, so we sat in the lovely bar and had a drink. I was a little surprised to find the barman had never hear of a stout-and-cider mixed bevvie, but he happily poured one.

That's when the wife checked our data usuage on our mobile hotspot that we just bought. It came with a gig preloaded, and she shouted, "All I did was use it for driving directions for a couple of hours and it's used 940M already! THIS IS BULLSHIT!!!" Then she started ranting about using a gig a day at $9 a gig and some damn heads were gonna roll at Skyroam, by god!

So I googled how much Maps uses for turn-by-turn directions, and it's not very much. Then *I* checked the account and immediately realized it said she had 940M left, so she hadn't used much at all, really.

Second emergency averted.

We decided to drive around town a bit while waiting on a room, then came back and checked in.

Here comes emergency number three.

The hotel is a Hilton, but it's in an old billion year old property, so no A/C and no lifts. We knew that.

Then they gave us the choice of two rooms and she said she wanted the quieter one. That one is down a hall, up three steps, around a corner, down a floor, and down a hallway that feels like it's leading to Narnia, it's so long.

She's still nursing her displaced kneecap (and now the doc thinks there's ligament damage), so that was met with much disapproval.

Then we found out the standard rooms don't have fridges, which Hiltons have always had in our experience.

Then she found out they have no ice machine, which she needs for icing her knee every few hours.

Then she found out we're near a housekeeping service area, so noise, noise, and more noise.

After that, nothing else was going to be right. No plugs on her side of the bed, so now she has to sleep on the "wrong" side, so she can have her noise app running on her phone. The closet is too small. Not enough hangers, parking lot view is crap, room service is too expensive, etc, etc, etc.

I hope she gets out of her funk or it's going to be miserable.

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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown

Welcome to England!

It does sound like Mrs CO is the sort of person who invariably leaves negative reviews?

CO, I swear we're married to the same woman.

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The admin formerly known as Force10

Looking forward to reading about your trip (we visited Cheltenham recently for the literary festival, I loved the architecture there).

JR - nope, she's never do that. The worst that she'd do (and has done) is just not recommend them to any clients. There's a reason why no client of hers ever hires a car through Hertz in Orlando; we got severely yanked around there by the manager once. Used to be her preferred rental agency for clients, now she'd tell them to use Uber and lose a commission before referring someone to Hertz.

She'll also make sure I hear about every single thing, right down to the toilet paper quality, though.

LP - it *is* amazing how similar different people can be. She's not got much in common with her two sisters, and they were all raised by the same people, but there's someone out in CA who's her spiritual sister!

For the record, I think the hotel is fine. Is it similar to other Hiltons we've stayed at? Nope. But it's also not a sterile hi-rise; it's in this cool rambling countryside property and the people working here are great. I got ice from the barman, for example. That's a lot more interesting than getting it from some ugly noisy machine.

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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown

Did you ask for a Black Velvet? Then again I suspect there isn't a lot of call for these any more, it used to be the serious boozers choice when I was growing up.

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Too bright to breed

Ha, funny how drink names are different the world over! I ask for tequila slime here and my tequila, lime juice and 7-Up magically appears, but if I ask for that even just across the border in Whitefish, they have no clue what I'm talking about.

And I though pretty much every hotel in Britain was small, cramped and dark by comparison to the US, so the Hilton sounds about par for the course. I did laugh about the data usage though! I know when I was in Japan I paid a small fortune for data (about $150 to rent the unit and data for two weeks) but it was worth every cent to have it instant and everywhere.

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Some people meditate. Some people caffeinate and vegetate.

Yep, that and also referred to it as a snakebite (which is what we used to order around Cambridge when we were living there in the '90's; Black Velvet was stout and champagne, ohhh la la!).

Last night, we went on a two-hour ghost tour. Lesson learned: never book anything for the day you arrive. By the time it was over, we'd been up for about 36 hours and could barely pay attention or keep up with the fast pace.

Breakfast in a bit, then some shopping at M&S, then...another ghost tour tonight (but we'll be rested!).

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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown

No, no, no.....snakebite is cider and lager! Yeah, but you're right, it should be Guinness and champagne.

'Mixed' is mild and bitter (good luck finding mild anymore)
'Golden' is bitter and lager.

....and any beer with 'tops' is a splash of lemonade e.g. a bitter tops.

Like Alicorn said, regional differences and all that...also the younger generation of barkeeps have probably never heard of any these.

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Too bright to breed

^^^ Yep, the guy at the bar tonight got a Stella with a lemonade top, which sounded way to summery for me.

Today was a pretty good day. Had breakfast at the hotel, just a very nice buffet and omelette bar. The rashers of bacon were gigantic.

Then we drove just a few minutes to Prestbury, so we could scope out our ghost walk later tonight, then on through Winchcombe (which was gorgeous), then we pootled down some single-track road to I don't know what hamlet, but we stopped at a pretty little pub for our noon drink, and the owner came out and spoke with us. She loves Texas like we love Britain, and we chatted for quite a while and even made reservations for Sunday lunch tomorrow.

Onward to the Slaughters (Upper *and* Lower, mind you!). We were last here in the summer probably in 1993, and it was crawling with tourists, like an amusement park would be. This time, it was much more manageable, though there were still enough there that we had to park at the in the "country-posh" pub lot, so we had to go in there for a wholly crap meal of fish and chips and a burger. There's well-done, and Satan's-doorstop-done, and this was about 10 shades past that.

The berst part (that's my own word for best-worst, meaning something so bad it's hilarious) was the complete dick in the Aston Martin in Lower Slaughter.

First, he couldn't manage any of the turns, because the streets (such as they are) are narrow, and he kept doing awkward three-point turns to get around, revving his engine the whole time, as if to say, "I have 9000bhp under here, you better believe it!"

That's not the bad part. The bad part is, he had his friend stand on the footpath that ran along the road (across from a mill stream) and take pictures of his car in front of several picturesque cottages and such.

No shit. He'd stop his car in the road, and his friend would shout, "Move up! Up! Further...hold it!" Then he'd snap a picture.

He did this maybe a dozen times, cars held up behind him, people trying to walk around him...what a douche!

The emergency today, though (there's one every day), is a vacation favorite titled Someone Has Stolen Our Credit Card Number!!!

MrsCO watches the credit cards like a hawk, doubly so on vacation, triply so when we're not in the US, and she saw a charge she didn't recognize and flipped her shit.

Turned out it was from the rental car company, completely legit, but it showed up as "North Perimeter Roa" on the online statement and that threw her off. Guess where the rental car office is? North Perimeter Road, Heathrow.

What always gets me is the reaction. Instead of saying, "Hmmm...what's this? What have I spent lately? Maybe I should google that name?" it's, "OH MY GOD SOMEONE HAS OUR CREDIT CARD NUMBER AND THEY'RE CHARGING A FORTUNE AND WE'RE GONNA BE RUINED AND WE'LL NEVER GET HOME AND WE'RE GONNA GO TO DEBTOR'S PRISON AND GET A PRISON DISEASE AND DIE HORRIBLE GRUESOME DEATHS AND-"

<CO tappity-tap in google>

"It's Enterprise. On North Perimeter Road. That's the hold he put on your card, remember? Remember he said you'd see that come through today?"

"Oh, ok. Ready for breakfast? I'm starving!"

Yep, right after I clean myself up after shitting my pants.

Anyway, off to Budgen's bakery and then a ghost tour!

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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown