It’s that time of year again – the time when you count down the days, the hours, the minutes, when you can put the machines down and bugger off on holiday for a while.

This year the Sinner family headed off to the beautiful island of Crete. We’ve been to a fair few of the Greek islands, but never tried Crete and everyone told us how lovely it is.

So we’re up at 3.30am to get in a cab to the airport at 4.30am! Blimey, talk about early…! waste of time going to bed really… anyway, the little sinners take it all in their stride and are stuffing cake and biscuits in their faces at 5.30am at the cafe in the airport, while we’re downing extra strong cappucino’s just to stay vaguely awake!

The flight was on time and easy, then as usual when you get off the plane onto the tarmac in Greece, the heat just hits you, making you instantly relax and realise the holiday has actually begun – brilliant!

After a (longer than in the brochure) coach transfer to the hotel we rock up to the reception only to be told that our room wasn’t ready – ‘here we go’ I think, typical of our luck…

… but then… the (very nice) man at reception said ‘we apologise for the delay in getting your room ready, so we’re sending you off to the restaurant (one of four!) for a free lunch’ RESULT!

Then a nice man arrived in a Fiat and took us to the restaurant (all of a 30 second drive) and we ordered what we wanted! Nice

After lunch the nice man in the Fiat returned and took us back to the hotel reception, but the (very nice) man said ‘we are very, very sorry, but your room is still not ready’

‘Fuckin’ great’ I start to think, then before I can get into full Victor Meldrew mode the (very nice) man said ‘so to apologise we want to upgrade you to a suite, will that be alright sir?’.

I blink, look at Mrs Sinner and (sarcastically) say ‘will that be all right with you dear?’. She confirms that that will indeed be fine with her, and I tell the (very nice) man that ‘Yes, that will be alright, thank you very much’

The (very nice) reception man then explained that they had to get our’suite’ ready, so while that was being prepared he gave us the cardkey to another room which we could use while waiting. Once again the nice Fiat man drove us to the room, promising to return shortly. We nipped off to the beach and gratefully paddled in the beautiful clear, warm sea for a bit, then ruined the nice clean room getting all the sand off ourselves!

The nice Fiat man then returned (you’d think he’d get bored by now eh?) and drove us back to reception to get our luggage.

Well, by now you can imagine I’m expecting (not Jeremy Beadle ‘cos I know he carked it years ago), but some hidden camera show host to leap out and laugh that we’d been framed or something. But no, the nice man in the Fiat came and put our luggage in the back and whisked us off to our ‘suite’, a beautiful, large, first floor, air-conditioned, double flat screen tv’d, huge balconied pad for the week. Absolutely blindin’ result!

Stuff like this never happens to the Sinners…

From then on our holiday just went brilliantly – the hotel was fantastic, the food superb, the beaches awesome – all in all a blissful, perfect week.

But now we’re back in grey old England and cold reality – so it’ll be back to the needle soon…

Hope you all have a good holiday too!

Tags: Fiat, Greece, Greek, Holiday, Isands, Meldrew, sinners, Victor