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I spent the whole week reading holiday brochures and even went with Mom and Dad to the travel agent, which was a disaster because when I get completely excited I talk too much. For instance, when Tunisia was mentioned, I said, “Yes. Four-star accommodation, all meals and we could go and see the Sahara Desert!”
    Mom said, “The Sahara Desert? You are joking. The Sahara Desert is a desert. People get lost in deserts. They starve to death and see mirages and get eaten alive by ants. Oh no, no, no, no. We’re not going to a desert.”
    The travel-agent woman said, “If you did choose the optional desert excursion, Mrs. Digby, you wouldbe accompanied by our trained local staff in a fully air-conditioned coach. It’s a very well-organized trip.”
    “No one ever,” said Mom, “INTENDS to get eaten alive by ants. But Accidents Happen. Especially in the Sahara Desert. What else have you got?”
    “Tenerife is already quite warm.”
    Although it is politically part of Spain, the island of Tenerife is off the coast of Africa and is therefore hot all the year round. Especially in the south. It’s more rainy in the north because of this big pointy mountain in the middle of the island. It’s so tall that it has snow on top, even in the summer. It’s called Teide. Mom looked interested when I told her all of this. I probably should’ve stopped just there and not gone on to mention that Teide isn’t just an ordinary mountain.
    “A volcano!?” said Mom.
    “An extinct volcano,” said the woman from the travel agency, very quickly.
    “Extinct or dormant?” said Mom, surprising everyone with her unexpected geological knowledge.
    “What’s the difference?” asked the travel-agent lady.
    “The difference,” said Mom, “between life and death.”
    The travel-agent woman held up a brochure for Florida.
    “Very popular.” She smiled, without going into detail.
    Mom looked at me. I said nothing.
    She looked at the travel agent, who just kept smiling.
    She looked at Dad. He tried to keep smiling too. But she raised an eyebrow and he just can’t cope with that. In the end he admitted, “Alligators.”
    After that there was Turkey (earthquakes), Cyprus (poisonous triggerfish), Italy (the Mafia) and Greece (shipwrecks). Then we were standing outside the shop with Mom taking a deep breath and saying, “Well, I haven’t even gone anywhere and I’m already glad to be home.”
     
    They decided to forget about the holiday and redecorate the kitchen instead. Dad pointed out that a holiday only lasted a week or two whereas a new kitchen would last forever. So instead of going on a well-organized, air-conditioned trip of the Sahara, we went to Nothing But Drainers and looked at granite work surfaces.
    “This one’s a bit pricey,” said the man, “but you get what you pay for and this is real Italian granite.”
    It was mostly blue. I remember looking at it, thinking, That’s igneous rock. That came from way underground in Italy. That drainer has had a more exciting life than I have.
    Dad said, “What d’you think, Liam?”
    “Good. You can’t go wrong with igneous. It is igneous, isn’t it?”
    The man said, “I don’t think so. These are new in todayfrom our supplier in Turin.”
    I said, “It’s made of crystallized magma.”
    “No, son. This is real Italian granite. It’s not made at all.”
    “It was made by magma bubbling up from the Earth’s mantle millions of years ago. The molten magma cooled in the crust and turned into crystals, then probably sat, being squeezed into flat beds for about a billion years until it was dug up by Italians. All that trouble and then it’s chopped up and sent to Nothing But Drainers, where my mom will look at it for five minutes and say, ‘I’m not sure about this color.’”
    The man looked at Dad. Dad just shrugged. “He’s in Gifted and Talented. At school. They study this kind of thing. Last month it was global warming.”
    Mom said, “He is right though. I’m