before you go away...

Here's a little story for you.

Imagine that its the Friday of a long-weekend and you're about to head off on a lovely extended weekend away. You load everything up in the car, hop in, and drive away. Off for a weekend of fun and frivolity with your spouse and kids.

Saturday morning, 5am: Your neighbours wake at 5am, woken by hearing a strange, piercing beeping. Every 45 seconds there's a beep. Count them... all... The neighbours think "We must buy a replacement battery today to put in the smoke alarm." However, when the neighbours get up later in the morning, they realise that its your smoke alarm's battery that is running low and needs replacing. The noise is coming from inside your house, yet they can still hear it loud and clear inside their house, with all the windows and doors shut. And its not a fibro house either - its double brick.

Throughout the day the smoke alarm battery continues to beep. The neighbours visualise sling shots and have very nasty, destructive thoughts. They try all sorts of things to block out the sound - using the cake mixer on high, putting the radio on, putting the dishwasher on, putting the washing machine on, and going OUT.

Saturday night, the neighbours move out to their back room and sleep on the fold out sofa bed - its quieter and they *nearly* can't hear the beeping.

Sunday morning, throughout the day etc, the beeping continues. Sunday night, the neighbours sleep on their lounge again.

The neighbours assume that you'll come home lateish in the day on Monday, at which time you'll replace the battery and peace will reign once again. The neighbours are wrong. You don't come home...

The thing about this story is that WE are the neighbours. And its now 8:30pm and our neighbours still haven't come home. I worked out last night that if they came home late today, we will have heard about 5000 beeps by the time they change the battery. Well, we've heard those 5000 beeps and they're still not home.

So, the moral of the story is: if you have a battery powered smoke alarm, please change your battery once a year. Pick a day and do it on that day every year. Maybe your birthday? Maybe on a specific public holiday? And if you don't change it once a year, PLEASE change it before you go away on holidays.

The thing is, this isn't even the first time its happened. Once before they went away and it did the same thing. We'll be sleeping on the lounge again tonight...

Worst travel experiences: Dining out in London

It's about time we owned up to some of the really bad travel experiences as well as waxing lyrical over the really good ones. Once you start travelling, it is amazing just how many of both extremes of experience come your way. The bad experiences stick in your memory, and are just as much a part of the retelling long after the holiday - often to be laughed off, even if it wasn't at all funny at the time.

One of the most prominent bad experiences in my mind relates to dining out at a certain Chinese restaurant along Brompton Road, Kensington (London) between the V&A and Harrods. I googled it prior to writing this post and was amazed to find it still operating (we visited in 2002). It got excellent reviews, and by any standards has an outstanding menu. 

We visited at lunchtime, and not for dinner, so the restaurant was quite empty apart from a table occupied by staff from the diplomatic missions nearby. 

Well, I believe that the food we ate that day was excellent. I can't remember, of course, because such a highlight of this dining experience was completely overshadowed by the service - and in particular the attitude - of the staff. I cannot begin to relate how appalling the service was. It appears that the source of this poor service was none other than the fact that brought with us one of those nasty, filthy objects known as "children".

We only had one child at this stage, and she is a well-seasoned diner in fine restaurants. The Bookworm has good table manners, is polite, eats practically anything put in front of her and I don't think she'd ever had a tantrum in a restaurant. She's not perfect by any stretch, but you could take her anywhere - even when she was a tiny baby. You still can.

Well, didn't we suffer because of her presence! The disdain was palpable. The staff couldn't get rid of us quickly enough. We were made to feel as if we were most unwelcome, and we'd better leave ASAP. I'm just sorry that I put up with the attitude and paid the bill. Next time - if there is a next time - I won't be doing either.