Today I took a kayak out to sea with the kids. Once we got far enough out I decided to jump in the sea and then spent the next half hour accidentally swimming with wild fucking dolphins!
No idea they were there. Wasn’t a planned tourist thing. I just got in the water, my son screamed shark, I shit myself and then a load of dolphins came along and messed about and swam around with me for a while before bogging off again. They’re kinda slimy.

I really love this place.

Wow, what an amazing experience uncle - those photos were great too, you’ve got one photogenic family dude.

I’m now officially on holiday for the next two weeks. Off to Salzburg on Wednesday for a week - we’re flying direct from Stanstead so I’m not looking forward to the drive on Tuesday. It can’t be any worse than our usual route of Newcastle - Edinburgh - Munich Airport - Munich Central Station - Salzburg though.

Looking forward to my first stein of Austrian beer though - so tasty.

Day one and we wake in a hotel room in 30 degree heat with two very happy boys who didn’t sleep a wink due to being too hot and uncomfortable.
I’m exhausted and my wife is knackered.

We have a few more hours to drive till our final destination today and I’m really struggling to see the point in a holiday when we wake up feeling like utter crap.

Still, onwards to adventure

Kids had another go at pyramids. Clever kids did them to broadly to scale. Broadly. Aren’t they good?

Unfortunately started a bit late so Sun had gone down by the time they finished.

Solid pyramids. Who threw the egg at her?

After yesterdays high of surprise dolphin swimming today has somehow managed to top it.  Took a mountain bike trail along the coast along a prescribed route with signs.  It’s around 24km but turns out not in a big loop. You get to a bit - stop and turn round your mountain bike.  The bit you turn your mountain bike around in is the single largest campsite I’ve ever seen and it’s all divvied up into different sections and qualities to keep apart the different factions of campers.  The final part of that campsite is for naturists and that’s where you spin round and head home.

“Come on, Evie,” my wife shouted as my ten year old daughter started floundering at the pedals as she approached a naked and massively obese pensioner from behind.

“Keep up the rear!”

My kids cannot get over that such places exist.  It’s the funniest thing they’ve ever known of.

Great you're having such a fantastic time uncle and conversely sorry you're not Wookie. Without wishing to appear pointlessly optimistic, I hope things improve and you can have a good time.

Our weekend jaunt to London to watch the ladies hockey semi finals is coming to an end. Dexter has been pretty good. Very excited as he can see trains from our room and all staff at the hotel have been superb. We're in the same hotel as some of the teams so Dexter had his photo taken with the Dutch team and we had a chat with the coach too. Spanish and Argentinian teams are also here.

I watched one semi final, Ireland vs Spain and Dexter was okay, but was definitely bored by the end, so we left Mrs Skondo watching the Netherlands vs Australia match and we went to play football and watch 'choo choos'. He was extremely happy.

In the evening just as I was picking up Dexter's milk from the bar I had to go and grab him as he'd wandered over to watch two of the Dutch team snogging. Not awkward at all.

Lol! Using children to perv.

I used to use my little nieces to pick up women, I’d take em out to the supermarket and if I saw a pretty young woman shopping I’d tell them (they were 3 and 5 at the time and cute as a button) “walk over to that lady and say you can’t find your Uncle”
They would. I would then run round the corner and see them “oh thank you for finding my nieces! I was so worried! I turned around and they wandered off! “

Yes I was foolish but I was young and it worked!

Holiday mood is looking up now I have a few coffees down me.
Gonna spend the afternoon on my laptop working today, have a deadline tomorrow.

No aircon in those temperatures with two toddlers must be an absolute nightmare.

Is Elf OK?  Another big quake in Indonesia.

Just walked through house (hot here!), we are fine.

We felt it while on runway! Plane had to wait while runway was checked for cracks and stuff. Also read just now that airport had some minor damage. 

I was gripping the seat handrests just willing the pilot to just take off, but they had to delay flight a bit to carry out safety checks.

Gonna check the news no, wife tells me it was 6.9, that’s bigger than the one a week or so ago.

Shit. BBC says 91 died. One in Bali. Some in Gilli islands near where we stayed, I was gonna plan visit there during our stay but decided to stay at resort instead.

We’ve been lucky. So many people in Lombok (quake epicentre around exact same place as last one) died, injured, so much damage.

Glad to hear you're okay elf. Looks to be pretty scary stuff.

Also hot wookie holiday sounds scary too.


But most importantly, do those photos show uncle to officially be the most handsomest forumite?

Cut to Wookie cooking in the southern hemisphere in December

This is my idea of a perfect holiday.

Just me.
Possibly the wife and kids too.

No phone signal, no WiFi, no access to the outside world.