A watery Sunday

This weekend DD was invited to the farewell party of a friend she'd only just met. (Such is the life of the ex-pat.)

This was no ordinary party. It was at Alpamare, home of Europe's biggest indoor water-slide.

Now I don't think I'm an over-protective mother, but I did have a little niggling feeling that it might be best if I accompanied her, or at least loitered nearby, since all the girls were at least two years older than DD, and DD is not yet a strong swimmer.

So at the crack of dawn I jumped on a train to Pfäffikon, with the aim of meeting them there. (DD had joined the girls in the car.)

Oh boy was I glad I went.

Not for DD's sake - she was fine; happy I'd come, but basically fine.

No, I was glad I'd gone because Alpamare has some serious water-slide action, and let me tell you I might have been acting all casual, but it's not every day you get the run of the place without having to keep an eye on a five-year-old as well.

The first thing I noticed on approach was that the side of the hill was steaming. That looked promising.

The next thing I noticed was that, because we were there so early in the day, the car park was rather empty. So far so good.

I located the girls easily, made sure DD was OK with new faces and non-English-speakers, and then went for it.

I can't say I tried all the slides, because there were a few favourites which took up a bit of my time, notably one which was very fast and you had to go down solo: unaccompanied by people or floatation devices.

DD, whenever I passed her, forced me to go down whichever slide she'd just been down, so of course being a good mother I obliged.

But by far the funniest thing about this place was the wave pool.

Every 20 mins or so a siren went off, and people started swarming towards the wave pool (which was really just like a 50 metre pool, if that) to the throes of Hawaiian guitar. Not only that, but as the Hawaiian music subsided, the artificial thunder started up, the strobe lightning kicked in, and then it started to 'rain'! I couldn't stop laughing, and wondered what DD was thinking about it all as she braved the chlorine waves.

I tried to explain to DD's friend's mother why it was so funny, but found myself telling her about Australian beaches and how DD had been surfing last Christmas holidays, and how huge the beaches are...

Even the raspberry (or was it grape?) slushy at lunch couldn't mask the homesickness at that point.

I meandered back to the train station with my hair still a bit wet under my hat, and wondered how long it would be before I felt sand between my toes again.


I felt the solidarity, though, when I got home to find DH glued to the computer again after yesterday's election, eyeing off the electorate figures and ruing the fact that he hadn't been able to go back to the tally room this year.