Operation Brioche: Chaos in the Sun
location: the Algarve, Portugal
I had never before seen it take so long to check-in bags to an aeroplane. The queue was growing longer and longer yet my family continued to debate which bags to stow away and which to bring as hand luggage. Just when I thought everything was settled, the Grandfather decided to unpack his suitcase and fish out a bulging plastic bag containing every single type of medication he'd ever been prescribed. The Mother then haggled with the woman at the check-in desk, trying in vain to get seats together, and the long walk to the plane through the warren of terminal two saw the Father and Brother trying every possible seat combination to determine who would sit with whom. These images stuck in my mind as we flew above the Portuguese coastline. I glanced over at Herself, sitting on the seat beside me. This was as typically chaotic an introduction to her first family holiday with us as you could get. In the space of one holiday, she would face mass consumption of ice cream, surprise room viewings and a daring mission to save on paying for lunch. I knew there were two ways this could go: She would either decide that a lifetime of this madness was not for her or else she would lose her mind in the chaotic wilderness that is my family on holiday.
My musings were interrupted by the view out the window as the plane made its descent towards Faro airport. The tidal flats of the Rio Formosa estuary stretched as far as the eye could see, a brilliant mix of blue water and white sand.
We were headed to a small town in the Algarve for a week. Once the extended family discovered this plan, various uncles and cousins from across the globe soon scrambled to book tickets, desperate to spend time with me, or simply to soak up the Portuguese sunshine.
As soon as we stepped out of the taxi to the town in which we were staying, everything melded into a regular routine that consisted of eating, boiling in the sun and shivering beneath over-enthusiastic blasts of air which I believe is called air conditioning.
Breakfast consisted of a stampede among my cousins to reach the breakfast buffet first. Scrambled eggs, bacon, beans, toast, jelly and hot chocolate were all scoffed in a manner which suggested that such large amounts of food would not be seen again. The bacon, in particular, was a massive hit and the hotel's weekly budget for food must have rocketed out of proportion.
For the first few days of our stay, the Grandmother launched Operation Brioche. This consisted of making a sandwich at breakfast, folding it inside a napkin, checking to see if the coast was clear and then flinging the item as fast as possible into a rucksack. The carrier of this rucksack would duck and roll up the stairs, dive into the Sister’s room and unload the precious cargo into the mini-fridge. We had reason to be cautious: the manager regularly stood at the window watching us eat. He had boundless energy and anywhere you turned, he was there, cleaning a breakfast table one minute, talking to the receptionist the next. We froze under his gaze.
Lunch was a similarly stressful ordeal. Members of the family were dispatched as follows:
To unpack sandwiches from the fridge.
To obtain Pastal de Nata and nectarines from the supermarket.
To keep the kettle constantly at 100 degrees Celsius and consistently fill the teapot, designed for two people, not fifteen.
To ensure that there was enough furniture on the balcony and, if not, retrieve cushions and blankets for those lower in the pecking order to sit on.
To acquire sunstroke due to lack of any shade.
This was then followed by a race to eat the food before it melted or ruined in the intense midday sun. Sounds of engines, gulls and a very annoying squeaking dog toy echoed onto the balcony, while house martins could be heard as they rushed into their nests on the neighbour's walls. Not that my family noticed, the stress caused by the morning's food preparations left us ready for a siesta. Operation Brioche was soon abandoned when the very sight of napkins sent shivers and pangs of guilt down everyone’s spines.
When the grandmother wasn’t supervising lunch preparations, she was busy socialising. Each breakfast saw her flitting from one table to the next, making friends with a German couple one minute and being invited to a Welsh woman’s house the next. One couple very kindly gave the Grandmother a tour of their room and balcony and the Grandmother felt inclined to reciprocate this kindness. This raised a dilemma: which family member's room should she show off? The question was quickly answered when she remembered that the room shared between the Sister and Herself had the larger balcony.
And so, the next morning, Herself was to be found answering the door to a middle-aged man, who she vaguely recognised from breakfast, announcing that he had come to inspect her room. Before she could respond to this invitation, Garry, as we soon discovered he was called, was closely followed inside by his partner and the Grandmother. “This is a lovely room. Look at the size of their balcony, Garry!” The viewing party unlocked the balcony door and traipsed out to admire the view. Still somewhat shellshocked and slightly uncomfortable, Herself and the Sister twiddled their thumbs and waited for them to continue on their way. The viewing party clearly had nowhere else to be and sat in the sun chatting. Ten minutes later, Garry’s wife was busy briefing Herself (who was brushing her teeth) on the morning’s activities (they didn’t go down to breakfast that morning and decided to have a lie-in instead). Garry's wife proceeded to show her a video of the Grandmother dancing with Garry the night before, a video which she clearly found to be exceptional comedy, before they eventually decided to socialise elsewhere.
Most afternoon’s featured a swim in the sea. The family and I would waddle slowly into the shallows, gasping at the low temperature of the water and the pain from the shells digging into our feet. While we gazed out at the Atlantic with as much trust as penguins preparing to dive into sea lion-infested waters, the Grandfather strode out into the depths as if he were getting into a warm bath. Eventually we would ease our way in, bracing ourselves for bitter agony. People often that say that the sea warms up when you’re in it for a while. This is codswallop, I suspect the real reason is that your legs are simply too numb to notice the cold any longer, or the shells. After about 10 minutes crouched uncomfortably in the freezing water, the family would decide to retreat towards the shore where the youngest cousin continued his mission to clean every shell in the Algarve. I would collapse onto a towel, shivering uncontrollably due to a lack of blubber and the stress caused by Operation Brioche.
Dinner menus in the Algarve can get very confusing. With so many tourists visiting every year, each food option is written in Portuguese, English, French and German. It took me a while to realise the reason I couldn't understand the menu was actually because I was naively trying to comprehend German. Added to this maze of languages is the occasional misspelling of English, such as chicten for chicken, which then sends you looking for a different section of the menu, assuming it to be anything except English. Combine this with my indecisive nature and you are left with myself grumpily telling people off for talking while I try to decide whether chesse would be as nice as cheese or whether it's just another spelling mistake.
During one meal, having past the hurdle of languages and choices, I was excitedly informed by the Grandmother that there was a bird sanctuary nearby. “Yes,” piped up Grandad, the very man who had made this discovery. He stared off into the distance while pointing towards the cliff top. “There are two gulls nesting on the top of that cliff…” His words were soon drowned out by group outcry over his exaggeration. He said the nests were monitored but I suspect he meant they were more monitored by the parent birds. Every time a gull was spotted sitting on a pole (almost every pole in the town had a gull on it), a “bird sanctuary” was pointed out to me.
The restaurant sat beside a small plaza, decorated with Jehovah witnesses standing like soldiers and a boy showing off his moves on a bike. One evening a living statue stood on a stool, covered from head to toe in fake chocolate, a hat placed upside down beneath him. The “Choccy man”, as he was dubbed by my three-year-old cousin, was soon kept in business by a mountain of twenty cents eagerly placed into the hat by my cousins.
Each night was rounded off with music pounding around the town until the early hours of the morning. This night was no exception, with a mass of bodies moving uncontrollably to the beat. It was a warm night. Overhead, gulls flew in the dark like white ghosts, making the most of the lights in the town to search for food. The three-year-old was busy offering his dearest possessions (toy cars) to a couple on a nearby table. The Mother attempted to copy the Brother's bizarre footwork while the Grandmother made yet more friends. The Grandfather decided this was a good opportunity to do his physio exercises in time to the music. And how did Herself fit into all this? Had she coped with all this mayhem? Well, she jumped around the square barefoot, bashing myself and the Sister with her flip-flops.