Days of Wine and...Well, More Wine...

Ow.

Ow ow ow ow ow...

OK, so my plan to provide a blog entry every day has technically gone down the river. There was wine involved. Clear, rather pleasant, Croatian white wine. And then...I think...there was more wine. And then there was snoring.

There was more than that of course, there was a flight from Gatwick to Zagreb, and Croatian car hire with my boss, Peter, and my colleague, pal and wine-buyer, Sally-Anne. Of course there was also a pernicious rumour about an Icelandic ash cloud. As yet, that hasn't messed with me, but we'll see. Blood was 5.9 yesterday morning, and we grabbed breakfast at Gatwick - a rather nice porridge, since you didn't ask. Flew to Zagreb on EasyJet, which was...well, it was EasyJet. When we arrived at Zagreb, Peter picked up the car, and the rest of us hid, not wanting to be put on the list as 'secondary driver'. That meant of course that one of us had to be 'navigator.' To my ongoing mystification, that was me.

Now, most of you won't know this, but I have no natural navigation skills whatsoever. I get lost coming out of restaurant bathrooms. And no, I'm not just trying to be funny - I've ended up in the kitchen plenty of times. When d tries to direct me, she's long abandoned the idea of using such primitive concepts as 'left' and 'right' - I can find about a hundred and eighty right turns in a circle, given my head. She uses 'wedding-ring-hand' and 'non-wedding-ring-hand' because it's at least a little more reliable. And no, I don't know why it should be, but it is. I once went for a job interview, map in hand, and came out of a tube station, and boldly,confidently even, turned right. It was only after half an hour of walking that I realised that none of the landmarks I was expecting to see were in fact visible. I turned the map upside down and realisation dawned. This would have been stupid enough on its own, but the fact that the job interview was with an organisation called the Royal Institute of Navigation just added an extra piquancy to the whole episode. My friend Sian can attest to an outing to a lecture when we were teenagers. She was driving, I had the map. "Which way?" she asked, innocently. "Erm...left," I said, again with some confidence. We ended up in a horrendous one-way system of endless left turns. We never got to the lecture. It became known as the "Wrong Left That Looked Right" incident. I've even got lost in a straight line - yes, of course I know that shouldn't be possible. But if you're supposed to be at Point X on a straight line, and you're actually at Point Y, thinking you're at Point X and swearing blind that's where you are, trust me, it's possible.

"Really?" I said, eyeing the passenger seat with suspicion. "You want me to navigate? I mean, really??"
"You'll be fine," said Peter, handing me a Garmin satnav. Normally, this would have been the kiss of death - me, navigation and technology. I shuddered, and got into the baking little Opel 4-door. "Really you will. What could possibly go wrong?"
Clearly, he needs educating, poor man.

The first thing that could go wrong was that the address we were going to...apparently didn't exist. I entered something on the same street, figuring this would be close enough. As a matter of interest, I'm reading Homer's Iliad at the moment, and for a second, I felt the shiver of gods laughing at me. But we set off, and marvelled at the beauty of Croatia. Seriously, just go - the words I could use simply don't do it justice - forests, mountains, gorges, twisting little roads that the Top Gear team would love, the Garmin basically did the job, allowing me to boggle at it all as we baked. We spotted all sorts of things that made Sally-Anne squeal, from the number of dive centres along Croatia's coast to the naturist camp half an hour from our hotel.

It was only a hundred and twenty miles later that things started to go a bit skewiff. Important little fact #1 - apparently, even a brand new, fresh out of the box satnav has mapping that's abooooout two years old. Important little fact #2 - Croatia is working its ass off right now to improve itself, both for the purposes of tourism, and to make itself look smart when it goes for the interview for EU membership. The conference we were attending was on an island called Krk (it's one of two islands, and if I'm honest, I'm having difficulty thinking of the second island as anything but Spck). The Garmin told us to turn "second left". There was left...or there was right. We turned left.
"Recalculating" said the Garmin, cheerily, in a kind of "Ohhh, don't worry, happens all the time" tone. She sent us round the block and brought us back to the same junction. "Turn second left," she said, this time with the forceful pleasantness of a primary-school teacher. Working on the principle that if the available left was wrong, maybe she meant the other left. We turned right.
"Re...calculating," she said, with the tight-jawed fury that is usually only found when a woman says she's "fine." She sent us round a different block, and brought us back to the same junction.
"Turn SECOND right," she said, this time appearing to add "you idiots" at the end. We tried to make her happy - we turned right then left.
"Re...bloody...calculating, she said.
"They've rebuilt!" Sally-Anne realised. She's trying to take us down a street that doesn't exist anymore!"
I pulled her plug, and we drove around following...of all things...street signs. Got to our hotel in a matter of minutes. There's probably a lesson there...

The lady at reception was brusque and efficient. Peter asked if there was an iron in the room.
"No," she said. "Is forbidden..."
"What?" we said. "It's forbidden to be uncrumpled in Croatia?"
"Yes," she said, smiling, pleased we understood.
"Ooooookay," we said. Turned out irnoing wasn't the only dangerous activity that was forbidden in Croatian hotels. Direct line calls to the room from outside too, were forbidden, it seemed.
"I have to draw a line," she said, as if we were asking to cover her in blancmange and bugger her with a naturist in a snorkel.

On the upside, the room was a thing of beauty, with its own balcony and a view of the nearby mountains. On the even upper side, we had access to the gym, spa and indoor and outdoor pools at the nearby hotel. Sally-Anne and I went to check them out before the evening reception and dinner. No bike, unfortunately, but there was a cross trainer - wow, I've forgotten how much that hurts after only a short time - an abductor-bench...which will come in handy when I give birth to my children, and a pull-down weight bar, with which I whacked myself on the head. We looked longingly at the pool, but had to get back for the reception. Listened to a movingly beautifully acapella group, which was like listening to a miniature male voice choir, and moved on to dinner. which in my case was tomato soup, bread and a little veal risotto. Which overall is not a bad food day.

Then there was wine. And talking. And more wine, and more talking and wine, and wine, and even more wine, and snoring, and no blog.

This morning, the news is that the Icelandic ash cloud is moving down over Europe today. In that event, there are two options - either we stay here, on this gorgeous idyllic island...or we drive home through country after country. So this is me, heading out to nick the spark plugs out of the car...