Floating flower parade fiasco and the caravan of fools
Well, I’m completely flattened.
On the bed.
Absolutely knackered.
At this very moment, I was supposed to be sitting alongside the flower parade.
I don’t know exactly why, but apparently that was the plan.
Presumably for stress-relief purposes.
Is stress relief Dutch? I don’t think it is.
Well then you’ll just have to look up what it means yourself.
Oh wait, I remember now: it’s something to do with de-stressing, I think.
You’re welcome. I think.
After years of absence and a long wait, it had finally returned.
A lovely evening watching boats decorated with an enormous amount of flowers, accompanied by music and a lot of noise. Although that may be the same thing.
Anyway, it is an established fact that our family is incapable of simply going somewhere.
And nowadays, with a baby in tow, every outing turns into a full-scale migration carrying roughly the same amount of equipment as an expedition attempting to cross the North Pole.
So we packed everything, including a picnic basket, 80 stools, chairs, 2 parasols, a wheel chair, a stroller and a cooler bag.
But we’re not there yet.
Before we ever reach our destination, I’m already mentally somewhere between “was this really the purpose of life?” and “or was the actual purpose to drink six bottles of vodka beforehand while my juggling house elephant watches?”
At that point I’ve also forgotten where we were going and whether red rabbits actually exist.
First we had to go back because my mother wasn’t wearing her dentures.
Once we finally arrived at the flower chaos, we couldn’t find parking.
So there we were, loaded down with our entire household beside the road, when we were practically run over by an elderly man who apparently got his driver’s license free with a bag of chips.
He almost flattened the baby.
And babies really don’t like that.
Trust me, you do not want to make babies angry.
We just managed to move the baby carrier, the baby, the picnic basket, a stool and another stool (me) out of the way in time.
And suddenly I thought of Mario Kart.
Yes.
This was him.
In real life.
The only problem is that Mario turns out not to be quite the racing legend he claims to be.
Why Nintendo continues to work with him remains a mystery.
Then he drove straight into a planter and completely destroyed it.
I strongly suspect Mario is near-sighted.
After that he parked exactly where I had suggested parking earlier, but my husband had rejected the idea because of turning around and various other blah blah blah reasons.
Anyway, after much carrying, groaning, negotiating and suffering, we finally climbed the dike to sit by the water.
Only to discover an entire retirement club having an elaborate picnic right in the middle of the only narrow path, approximately four centimeters wide.
And they were actually annoyed that the caravan of idiots needed to pass through because apparently there was nowhere else to sit.
Eventually we reached our destination.
At which point the baby suddenly turned tomato red.
Then my 86-year-old mother started complaining too.
And I, a person who normally handles heat perfectly well, nearly perished on the spot and could feel my soul slowly beginning to leave my body.
Everyone was hot.
Everyone was yelling.
And together, in perfect harmony, we all started chanting:
“I’m going home.”
“Too hot.”
“This is impossible.”
“Get the car and let’s get out of here.”
Unfortunately, that did not go smoothly.
Because my husband, turbo optimist himself, was the only irritating person present who insisted on wrapping every argument we made in the world’s most beautiful glitter paper so we’d stay in that miserable 33-degree outdoor oven.
All so we could watch a collection of wilted dancing and shouting (read: singing) people on boats covered in wilted flowers and wave at them like complete idiots.
After roughly 300 rounds of “please stop, please stop, please stop,” it finally dawned on him that we genuinely needed to leave before my melted brain started dripping out through my ears.
So, like a dishcloth, armed with our final three unmelted functioning brain cells, we returned home completely empty-handed.
Including the baby, my mother, my daughter and her boyfriend, my husband, the stools, wheel chair, parasols, cooler bag, picnic basket and our final three unmelted functioning brain cells.
So, long story short:
Four hours of preparation.
Two hours of hauling stuff around.
One near-fatal encounter with Mario Kart.
Zero minutes of flower parade.
This floating flower parade is 100% going down in history as the most unnecessarily complicated flower parade of all time.
Photo credits: me 2017
