See you around..... for the next million years

So, the boiler is mended and we're telling the kids that Santa is implementing austerity measures to offset fuel price hikes (it wasn't a good harvest due to the wet summer......think about it.....)
But speaking of the kids, it's been great to spend quality time with them on the windy isle (it turns out) of Lanzarote. Well, when I say 'quality'.....
It's like the old cannabalistic adage goes, 'I love kids, but I couldn't eat a whole one'.  I DO love my kids, but 24/7 and I suddenly appreciated even more the value of that excellent child-care provider; 'school'.
With a chilly breeze blowing in rain-cloud after rain-cloud, there was quite a lot of 'entertaining' to be done.  The only time we sat down was when Karate Kid came on in English!  (Disney in Spanish had started to grate on the old eardrums so the TV didn't provide much distraction.)
Also as it was term-time, the Jet2-delivered raft of fellow ee-by-gum, Geordie and Brummy-accented holiday-makers included very few school-age youngsters to entertain our boys.
So with yet another downpour we headed to the Lanzarote Aquarium.  At €40 for four it wasn't cheap but killed an hour and turned out to be quite educational.
The tanks were full of colourful and interesting species of ocean life and some shark eggs with the soon-to-be-hatched babies squirming around inside them was a highlight.
But the display which brought a tear to my eye and I hope reinforced the lesson I'm always banging into the kids featured a very different species; human filth.  A display of a commonly-spotted sea dwellers such as plastic bags, coke cans and wine bottles, made us all stop and think.  It explained how many years it takes for each piece of trash to decompose, ranging from 30 years for a carrier bag to millions of years, or probably never, for a glass bottle.
It's not rocket science is it?  The more crap we fail to recycle in the correct manner and the more we consume, the fuller our land, and our seas, will be with dangerous waste.
That same day for lunch I discovered some cheese slices were contained in a thick plastic package with a thinner plastic layer within.  Once through these two layers, I found each wafer thin slice of shiny cheese was wrapped in yet another plastic pouch.
I shudder for my children's (and their children's) futures as we become a plastic-wrapped world seemingly without the brains to either abandon the need for triple-plastic packed cheese or without the systems or the will to educate/force consumers to recycle effectively or suffer the consequences.

The boys at the Lanzarote Aquarium

Baby sharks about to hatch

Great weather......for wind surfers!

To end on a lighter note '6 o'clock news'-style, and to neatly link to another packaging bug-bear, namely those stupid tiny milk cartons with a dribble of milk.  The wind was so bad on our departure the plane could either take off with half a tank of fuel or hit a volcano.  So the pilot opted, on our behalf, for the first option and we dropped into the Algarve to refuel.  Whilst on the tarmac at Faro, an air steward left the plane and returned with a box of mini milk cartons.  As he passed, I questioned whether we had just stopped to re-stock the milk supplies!?  To which  he replied, "no madam, we needed fuel!" and walked off leaving me red-faced at my failed attempt at comedy.  He later returned and said: "I'm so sorry, I get your joke now!"  But I think the moment had passed.