The whole point of flying from Bristol is that it's 45 mins from our house and you can park practically right outside the terminal, which makes the whole air travel experience merely hideous as opposed to totally fucking hideous. So Richard's decision to save us 40 bloody quid by pre-booking 'Silver' parking (a carpark on the opposite side of the airport, involving a mile trek with suitcases from car to depot, a 15 minute queue to deposit car keys in depot, a 10 minute wait for a 5 minute bus ride to Departures so that we JUST made it before check-in closed and I had no time to buy sunglasses, a book or a coffee) DID NOT GO DOWN AT ALL WELL.
After my first coffee of the morning, served at 30,000 feet over the north coast of Spain, my jaw started to unclench. I stopped growling and the rest of the flight was pleasant enough, if you like sitting with your knees rammed into your chin that is.
Arrived in hot and sunny Lanzarote and joined a massive queue to pick up hire car. (Am very bad at queuing. Very bad indeed.)
So this was the deal: you can choose 'standard' insurance cover, which covers for things that could go wrong, or 'gold' insurance cover, which covers for things that could go wrong if the car was tacked together out of string and tinfoil and you were a complete bloody idiot. But if you chose 'standard' you had to leave a €500 deposit.
Cue me going off on one.
Fuck you Goldcar Lanzarote. Fuck you in the mouth. (Anyone know the CEO's email address?)

Fortunately, after an uncomplicated half hour drive, our hotel, a restored country house on the outskirts of a little village called Uga, was easy to find. Casa El Morro is a wonderful place and consists of about five self-contained apartments off a central courtyard. Our keys were in the door, with a little note welcoming us. Ours is a two-storey wing of the house, eclectically decorated with great hunks of furniture that the artist owner has collected on her travels. We have a double verandah with day beds and scatter cushions and at the bottom of the garden is a secluded communal pool, and also a yurt, where you can have a massage. There is no 'reception', no bar, no restaurant and seemingly no staff. Very peaceful and really really lovely.
We stocked up on provisions from the village shop, then lolled about on the daybeds around the pool, then sauntered back through the cacti and olive trees to prepare supper on the terrace.
Problem was we couldn't get in. We'd locked ourselves out.
The keys were on the table in the sitting room and the doors are the type that can only be opened with a key from the outside. No-one was around and we were in the middle of nowhere. In the courtyard we found a number to ring in case of emergencies - thank God I had my phone with me. The lady said we could find spare keys in 'the office'. We found the office, we found a box with about 10 bunches of keys, NONE of which opened any of the three entrances to our apartment (turned out the cleaner had accidentally taken them home.) Plan B: The balcony doors to our room on the first floor were open so we scoured the grounds for a ladder. No ladder. Holly found a way onto the roof but couldn't shimmy down. Eventually, after much swearing, and a lot owork get-pointing, we got a table from another apartment and balanced it on our table and balanced a chair on top of that and Richard risked life and limb to climb in. Hooray. And all because the lady loves Milktray.
Got pissed after that.