50 + 1 day!

Welcome to the Pyrenees, people! ⛰️

It is indeed the second day of our here travel, and no I have not yet written the first day but that is for the simple reason that is: I was originally going to start today but mother has requested, nay, *demanded*, that I write about her birthday as well (see: yesterday) so I will have to do that.

But here we are today, the 23rd! and what a day it was!

We awoke at the tragically unreasonable hour of 9 am (I know, our parents are absolute monsters I mean, do they not understand the necessity of a lie in for the teenage population?) and of course it went exactly as every single time we have had to wake up early has gone in my entire life.

That's right people, I am awoken by dad, I drift in and out of sleep, I hear through my sleepiness the sounds of Lily talking to the parents and making no effort to be quiet, and I know in my heart of hearts that she is sure to think she is our mother- and there it is, "upsie-dupsie boys!" in a soft sound my sisters and I have learned to dread. It's somehow the most patronising thing possible, and yes, I say that having spoken to mansplaining men in my life, so you can trust me on this.

Anyway, then we drag ourselves out of bed and have breakfast. And, well, this was a tale of trials and tribulations. You see, I thought, wow I should have a healthy breakfast, so I got out the greek yoghurt and fruit, which was a truly complicated task since the fridge is small but full, so it was a true balancing act. However, I continued on, my determination knows no limits. That done, I noticed the chocolate spread and bread, thought, "who needs health anyway", and put the yoghurt and fruit away- a true struggle once more.

However, my parents betrayed me. Since I hate peanut butter. And also peanuts. But the chocolate spread was PEANUT CHOCOLATE SPREAD and not hazelnut. You see the issue here, I’m sure.

So after spreading it joyously on my bread with the happiness of a chocolate lover, and then I licked the knife as everyone does (no, stop pretending you don’t, everyone does it, we need to accept this as a society), and tasted PEANUTS and i was like NOOOOOOO and so I was tragically sad as I ate my two chocolate spread-breads (yes of course I ate it, I mean It’s still chocolate).

But after soldiering through that ultimate tragedy, I went to put on suncream and got dressed (for all those who followed along on our walking holiday last year and had perhaps a small hope that we would do matching outfits again, well, Lily vetoed this and we did not manage to coordinate ourselves well enough to bring the same clothes).

It was also the grand reopening of RooPauls Gourmet Bakery! Which, for reminder, is when me (Roo) and dad (Paul) make sandwiches to take on walks! However in recent years I’ve just sort of taken on the marketing of our business. So here I am: marketing. Buy our sandwiches, they’re good, guys! Source: trust me bro.

I’m nailing this! Gimme my promotion already!

Alright, so the plan was to leave at 10, and, well. We’re the Simpsons! So at 10:17 we stepped, nay, sauntered out the door (honestly this was remarkably punctual for us). I tried to get dad to lock the door, but he looked at me with slight derision and too much faith, said “you know how to lock a door Roo,” and walked away. So, since I am incompetent, I got the key stuck in the door because I used the wrong one. It was firmly lodged. Despite all my great strength, I could not *dis*lodge it.

So no, I do *not* know how to lock this door, apparently.

Thank god dad will never know. I can just hear the echoes of his mocking laugh as I write.

Oh wait, that's just him making fun of Lily.

But soon enough we were off! And in the twenty minute drive we queued some good old songs that were the soundtrack to our last trip, to feel some nostalgia. This includes Don’t Forget You Love Me by Calum Hood, Undressed by Sombr, and All My Poetry by Close Your Eyes. Unfortunately this last song was Kpop, and so Lily took offence to this, since she did not know it and couldn’t sing along and also felt left out because she wasn’t here last year.

And so after a brief argument, we were sitting there in silence, staring out different windows with our best “I’m annoyed” faces, the bopping tunes still playing as mum and dad navigated the tricky hellish roads.

Lily requests that I inform you that she was in the right. “Oh, *of course*, Lil!” I say, as the camera pans to me writing down ‘SHE WAS IN THE WRONG’, sitcom-style.

We laugh.

The walk started off well; we filled our hearts with our usual Simpson Confidence, a swing in our step as we took in the views. There were some very nice views too; in fact once we even stopped to take a patented Simpson Selfie. And then, still happy, still believing our parents loved us, we sisters set off on the continuation of our walk, not noticing that our parents had stayed back, that’s right, to TAKE A PIC WITHOUT US!

That photo shall be captioned “ultimate betrayal”. I am outraged. Heartbroken. Backstabbed.

Anyway, Lily and I decided to make the betrayal more bearable by playing the guess who game, a staple on walks, and we begged the twins to join but they staunchly refused. Our cries fell upon deaf ears, so we pulled out the ultimate weapon: boisterous, uproarious laughter, loudly proclaiming just how much fun we were having.

Alas, in our fun we failed to factor in the fact that their ears would not in fact have un-deafened, and so we were forced to play alone.

I decided to raise the stakes. “Lily,” said I. “We shall play for a bite of the other’s sandwich”. Lily did not in fact listen. I took that to mean, “yes, of course, oh wise sister-mine”.

And so we played. The heat was on! Evidently I did not feel said heat though. I picked Hamilton. Lily got it in 3 guesses. “MY SAMMY” I cried. “Wait what?” said Lily. I pretended to throw myself off a cliff in lieu of an answer.

So we decided on a rematch.

Thankfully, I did end up with a strong lead of two bites, rekindling my dwindling will to live. However, the cruel soul then decided to pick Steve Jobs, which, needless to say, was not something I guessed easily. It took me many, many guesses. She kept saying “just keep thinking of other jobs!”. Which was rather funny, truth be told. Plus, at that point we had begun a steep incline, which led me to whine and moan and dramatically sit on the ground, loudly shouting that I’m “aeneeeeeeemic” much in the way that I had last year.

However, no sympathy was found, since my mother, with whom I had once whined, so far ahead that it could have been some deity shouting down from the heavens, replied “Take your damn iron pills then!”

Which, valid.

Brief interlude: though this should be an everyone blog, I spent much of the walk up with Lily, and far behind all the others, so journalistic integrity tells me I can’t guess what they spoke of.

Eh, I’ve never been known as a person with much integrity.

Here is my best guess: “Oh hahaha (imagine this in a posh british accent by the way) Oh gosh oh golly, we are far superior to those small beings there behind us, reminiscent of ants, nay of worms, oh hahah, us with our not healthiness and our regular iron levels, oh let me just leap over this rock for fun”.

There you go, that’s my best guess.

Interlude over!

Many water (this was a running joke between mum and dad, the latter who thought we wouldn’t have enough water and brought so many bottles, and mum laughing at this because we really did not need that much water) and walker’s chocolate (yes we tried new chocolate flavours, yes one was the perfect lemon chocolate of last year, and a new one was cookie dough chocolate which was just *chef’s kiss*) breaks later, we stopped at a cliff's edge. It was time, we agreed, for lunch.

So we spread out our blankets and feasted like kings!

Well, kings who have no castle and no kingdom nor much of anything save a sandwich and a pack of crisps, but details, details.

We were surrounded by ants and beetles, and debated whether we should continue up the mountain, because yes, we realised that despite all of the aforementioned Simpson Confidence in our hearts, well, that didn’t translate to Simpson Skill, and so we went the wrong way and were climbing up the wrong mountain.

We longly and loudly debated, a very rousing speech was made about the Simpson nature, and first walks, and true courage and endurance. And then we decided we’d just go back down.

At one point during lunch, Dad moved into the shade, which brought him closer to the trees and the hill.

For this story to be understandable, let me first take you back circa yesterday, when dad dove into the pool and Allegra said “one day someone is going to prank dad and fill the pool with resin. And then he”ll dive”. And I said “is that a threat?” and she said “I never said that I would be the one to fill it with resin”.

Back to the present, when Allegra says, “imagine Dad just slipping and we see every tree shake as he hits it on the way down”. We all started laughing at that image, but Allegra continued: “and at the bottom there’s a pool, and you think it’s a pool, but it’s filled with resin”. And we all just DIED of laughter then and there, me and Lily slapping our knees in sync like a grandpa in a book, dad looking a little affronted. I think he should fear resin-pools.

A good time was had by all.

We also discussed the phenomenon of “Alpine divorces” and it was concluded, and I don’t know how, that we were going to be Alpine orphans? I think our parents were implying they were going to leave us there????

Side note from dad, since we are not in the Alps he insists that we are Pyrenees Orphans. Mum called him a “pedanty-pants”, for being pedantic.

The time came for us to sadly head back down the hill. Lily, who was tired of walking with me and my complaining, apparently, ditched me for the twins, and I heard them singing to Just Dance, all three of them, without moi. And so I vowed to have much more fun with the parents. So we laughed at our inside jokes, we discussed “little geckies” (Mum’s words for geckos), and Mum spoke the words "Allegra is adopted” (confirmation at last?). We also talked about what we would do if we met a Bear, so mum said “don’t anger it: for example, don’t tell it you don’t like Kpop”. Me and dad laughed with glee and happiness (since we call Tate “Bear” sometimes. No, I can't tell you why.)

And then I was a victim of man-crediting. That's right. We were talking about the blog from last year, and how mine was wittily named “Give Puys a Chance”, and dad said, TO MY FACE, that he came up with that. I hastily informed him that this was not the case; he had given a few suggestions, such as “Puys in a Pod”, but I was the one who ultimately decided on the name. And then this man had the NERVE to claim I was gaslighting him!! He was all “do you even know the song” and I was like “Oh it’s just a saying” and he was like “pfff just a saying, yeah sure you don’t even know what it is how could you have come up with it?” And I was outraged.

We looked, then, for the title of their blog from last year, which was “a hole in the mountains”, and dad just burst out laughing, like genuinely, about how bad of a name that was. Mum quickly leapt to defend herself, it came out that she was the one who named and wrote most of that blog, but Dad was still laughing. He then asked, “oh, what would you call this blog this year?” and Mum replied “Grumpy old bastard”, to which we all chuckled heartily.

So it can be said that me, mum and dad had lots of fun. Despite this, when Lily said to me “I’ve said twice to the twins that they are more fun than you”, I was heartbroken.

But hey. What can you do?

Me, mum and dad continued to laugh, so did the other three, we had caught up to them and we were more of a group. We all came to the consensus that we were happy to have decided not to continue on as our legs were sore from the steep hill and our shoulders were burnt from the hot sun.

The family also partook in a mid-trail knee stretching circle and then it morphed into a skibidi dance circle as things often do.

It was decided that it was time for the chocolate spread on bread, and so we found a shady spot, sat down on the rug, which was demanded by Allegra who simply refused to sit on the grass. But two seconds into the sandwich eating, she noticed a spider, leapt off the rug, and sat down on the gravel road. The parents were so glad they got out the rug then.

The worst part? It was PEANUT BUTTER CHOCOLATE SPREAD on the bread. :( I truly live through such tragedies. The world has never known greater sadness than the one I felt. Woe is me.

Maybe Lily was right to not walk with me.

Dad and I were still discussing the blog title, and I said that in this blog I would tell the truth about how I came up with the name, and he sniffed and said “well, history is written by the victors”, as if that were an insult??, but I was like “At least I'm winning?” so yk.

Anyway, we then made it back to the car park, where we noticed a sign post that pointed us in the direction we wanted to go originally, a signpost that we of course ignored. I should tell you that we embarked upon the walk at perhaps 10:30 and returned at around 3? Something like that; it wasn’t a short wrong-walk. This mistake took hours off of our life spans, people!

On the way home, we quickly stopped in a shop, and then drove back to the place where the siblings hopped in the pool. I myself preferred to read The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson, which is a pretty good book I recommend, and then Mum was trying to figure out how the piano in the music room worked, to see if we could record on it. But we couldn’t really figure it out so we just messed around a bit before it was time to make dinner.

I sat in the kitchen with Lily for moral support as dad cooked lemon chicken, and I began to write this here blog. Mum joined us, we played some Bruno Mars, and then dad knocked over the cornflower, which was kind of funny, because cornflower really gets everywhere, and dad looked so funny standing there with a sad smile on his face. What's worse is, when serving it, he managed to catapult a spoonful of rice onto the floor.

But the dinner was truly tasty, we ate it with glee, and we laughed a lot at many funny conversations, and the twins kept asking questions to which the answers were lemonade, so that they could sing lemonade by one kpop group or the other, idk which. Lily once laughed so hard that she got wine up her nose, which is according to her, an unpleasant experience.

After dinner, we lounged, pooled, jacuzzid, had cake, generally a good time was had by all. The sunset on the mountains was nice, the vibes were immaculate, and the only thing that could have made it better would have been the absence of mosquitos and flies.

That applies to every situation, in fairness. Curse those winged bastards!

We migrated inside when it began to get a tad chilly, and they waited for me to finish the blog before they went to bed but alas, it is 23:45 and I sit here alone since one by one, like the aforementioned flies, they dropped.

By that I mean went to bed. They’re not dead, to clarify.

But here we are, at the end of the day, feet aching but hearts warm.

See you tomorrow!Read more