The Glove Boat
Call me weird (I won't be offended) but I actually liked going on holiday with my parents.

I'm not sure I was as popular with them though...

8 months after I was born my parents had recovered sufficiently to go on holiday. Pre Rakky, they were pretty adventurous types, they generally just stuck a pin in a map and toddled off, or drove across europe till they got bored. But I think they were still reeling from the shock of dealing with this large, demanding, red faced bundle, so decided to go for the easy option and go on a cruise on the QE2.

The day for departure dawns fair, and we pack up the car with my mum's obligatory 18 suitcases and a flotilla of nappies. I'm grouchier than usual and squalled all the way to the port.

We board the ship and as we're settling in to the cabin (with me still screaming my lungs out), Mum unwraps my from my baby bundle to see if maybe I needed changing or was too hot. Nope, but there is an ominous looking spot on my back....

...which 12 hours later was an incredibly virulent attack of chicken pox. I was taken to the ship's hospital where my parents were informed that as chicken pox is a communicable disease I would have to be quarantined. And as I was too young to be told not to scratch, they had to put mittens on me and tie my hands to the side of the cot.

So for 10 days, my parents had to watch me through glass as I cried myself insensible whilst tied down wearing mittens. Apparently they snuck me out one evening, so if anyone was on the QE2 in summer 1975 and got chicken pox, it's probably my fault.

Sorry mum, sorry dad. And I apologise for getting food poisoning in the Canary Islands and meaning that you had to take it in turns to stay in with me. And for being stung by that jellyfish in Denmark. Oh, and getting tonsilitis when you decided we'd have a quiet holiday in Torquay.

I think I now know why I'm an only child...
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Tue 7 Aug 2007, 12:51, Reply)