Holiday meltdowns

So we’ve had our annual family holiday, the first with baby in tow, and we all came home with all our limbs and our sanity reasonably intact – a plus in my eyes.
We were only really going down the road to deepest, darkest Donegal but travelling with a baby meant we had to pack the car to capacity with baby paraphernalia. There was no room to breathe enroute and the kids had their little faces squashed up against the windows, frightening other road users the whole way there.
We eventually found the most gorgeous of cottages up on a mountain overlooking the beach. We had just cows for neighbours and the nearest shop was 35 miles away (we all had a little panic attack about that particular fact at various stages throughout the week).
There were fun times, relaxing evenings and in typical O’Neill family fashion a fair few meltdowns.
Everyone had their off day. Daniel threw a monumental hissy fit on day two when we took him to a gorgeous countryside park, filled with ornamental lakes, rose gardens and ancient castles. He was upset about the distinct lack of shopping facilities in this, the wildest of wild parks. On another day Caolan flipped his proverbial lid because he didn’t like the rain (of which there was aplenty). I cracked under the pressure of trying to entertain three young children for days in Donegal and stopped the car at the roadside and dramatically threw all my Bord Failte documentation in a bin. The husband just tutted a lot and muttered bad words under his breath.
One day we had a synchronised meltdown in the car whilst parked in Donegal Town. Everyone was shouting to have their opinion/complaint/request/insult heard and the baby was screaming. There were maps being waved about and people were being called derogatory names. The Lord’s name was taken in vain a number of times. Several American tourists hurried away from the scene in case by gawking they would somehow be sucked into our world of madness and mayhem.
In Donegal they think the Highway Code was the name of the Furey Brother’s fourth album. It certainly takes a little getting used to the rules of the roads. For example when in Donegal did you know that it’s the law that you must park on top of the lines between two spaces or on a roundabout, that many of the Donegal road signs point into lakes or at cows in fields or that it’s normal to abandon your vehicle at traffic lights to nip to the shops? But get those wacky racers out of their cars and you’ll find that Donegal people are gorgeous, friendly, funny, warm and welcoming.
We saw some strange things. There was an old man we used to meet on the road outside Portsalon who took his Shetland Pony for a walk every day wearing a pristine suit – the man, not the pony – the pony had on a dog collar and lead. There were various old ladies in scarves carrying baskets of scones and farmers in fields with peaked caps drinking mugs of tea; there was a crowd of sheep queuing up at a bus stop. They were probably all planted by Bord Failte for the benefit of American tourists. Whatever, it made us laugh.