Greek sunshine and '˜free' booze

So we smashed open our piggy banks and booked a marvellous all-inclusive hotel in Corfu.

Daughter #1 didn’t fancy it, preferring a weekend in a tent at the Leeds Festival. However, daughter #2 definitely did. The toughest things about all-inclusives are not eating and drinking yourself into Type 2 diabetes and alcoholism by the time you fly home.

On day one you virtuously pick at salads and fresh fruit. But by the end of your holiday, when you’re the colour and shape of a freshly Ronsealed shed, you’re wondering if that fourth pint before lunch really is overdoing it.

It doesn’t help that a bottomless lake of free* booze is on tap, literally. Self-service beer and wine pumps that are only turned off at midnight and a bar that serves any drink ever heard of.

Suddenly, news from home. The pets are playing up. Marleyboo the cat sneaked into the tumble drier before daughter #1 switched it on and he went for a few spins on the ‘Cupboard Dry’ cycle before screaming for his life. Came out seconds later, fluffy and smelling of Comfort. Then Walter, the adolescent sighthound, chewed a parcel to bits.

Greek Superleague club Kerkyra play 10 minutes down the road so it’d be churlish not to go and watch them kick off their season, where they play out an incident-packed 1-0 defeat to Panionios at Corfu’s National Stadium. Two missed penalties (six tooled-up, world-weary coppers behind the goal methodically put on their crash helmets and picked up their riot shields as Panionios’ striker stepped up to fluff his) and away fans waved distress flares like they were at a Stone Roses gig. And all for €10 a ticket for a top division match – about half what you pay to watch a game in League Two. Like you didn’t know already, football fans in England are being rinsed.

Free* As in already paid through the nose for before departure.