Memories of Douglas Number 22

AMSTERDAM - AND OTHER STUFF.

Today my daughter Becky and her husband flew off for a short break in Amsterdam. It brought back memories of a holiday which my late husband Douglas, me and the children spent in Amsterdam in 1999.

In those days we booked holidays with a travel agent ( I don't now - do it all online ) and we always went to Travel Needs in our village. We had a brochure and had chosen the dates and hotel. So Mr Travel Needs phoned up the company who said they only had 1 room of their allocation left - of course we wanted 2 rooms. Mr Travel Needs said that the hotel we wanted was in another brochure and this other company might have 2 rooms. So he phoned up - but they also only had one room left.. So in the end we booked one room with one company and one room with the other.

When we arrived at Schiphol Airport we waited for our pre-booked transport to the hotel. We obviously had to pair up one adult and one child so me and Neil were one pair and Douglas and Becky the other. Mine and Neil's transport arrived first - a luxury mini- bus. The driver said that the previous passengers he had driven were The Backstreet Boys - a (well known? ) pop group. Becky and Douglas just had an ordinary car - Becky was jealous.

The hotel ( The Radisson ) was one of the best we had stayed in - very unusual lobby and every room had a different theme. We had a really enjoyable holiday.

As this series of memories of Douglas will soon come to an end I was thinking of some other snippets of things to mention. So here goes......

He drove a car but just to get from A to B - he didn't enjoy driving.
He was stubborn at times.
He liked children - but not babies. He preferred it when they were old enough to have a conversation with him
He loved tripe, black pudding, liver and kidneys.
He loved ice cream.
He loved rice pudding and bread pudding.
He loved hot weather - the hotter the better. He was dark skinned so he never burned ( unlike me ). He liked being outdoors and when the weather was nice he would spend hours in our back garden just sitting on the bench reading a book.

When he was a 17 year old lad in The Palestine Police he found that during the summer it was too hot and sticky to sleep indoors so he used to go up on to the flat roof of the police building. He would take up his bed-roll and sleep up there in the nude. He was the only one who did this. When winter arrived it would start raining so the night he got wet was the time he knew to come indoors again..... till next summer.

If we were on holiday in Spain or Majorca and our accommodation had a balcony Douglas would often sleep outdoors..... not in the nude I can assure you.

(Today I have mostly been mowing lawns and visiting the dentist. The weather has been wonderful )

This is an edit as I forgot to do son Neil's update( for anyone that's interested)

" In ko phangan now, went to a beach party last night, was fun. not much to do here so going to have a chill day then off to either ko samui or phi phi tomorrow. My back is a lot better now, painkillers have really started kicking in, and Helen's foot is pretty much healed so we're almost back to full health! hope you're well, take care"