Confessions of a holiday horror victim
He: “This holiday has proved that we are perfect together.”We’re coming to the end of the Summer holiday season. For some, it will be a welcome relief. For all the Summer holidays that fit neatly into the Cliff Richard song lyrics of the same name, there will be a choice few that will more likely fit in into the narrative structure of the “Holidays From Hell” programme.
I’ve only really been on one awful holiday and it was only a disaster because I was really ill during it. I don’t remember much of the week, but that’s mainly down to the fact that I was in Spain, and the Spanish answer to flu is to give the type of medication that the rest of the world uses only to help end-stage cancer patients through the pain.
Still, there have been moments where things had the potential to go horribly wrong.
In Florida, whilst a student, me and my pal openly lied to two policemen. I won’t say what for, as I am unsure about the statute of limitations, and really would rather never see either of them ever again.
Suffice to say that had we not been able to keep the act up after two hours of interrogation, then our holidays might have taken a rather deportation type turn. I’m not proud of what I did. Well, OK, I am a little; I faced off CHiPs. (And then, once off the hook, they asked us out for a drink…so we must have been very convincing).
In another turn of events, whilst overnighting at New York’s La Guardia Airport I apparently stole the spot belonging to a homeless guy when I crashed out behind a vacated service desk. Fast asleep, waiting for the hours to pass til my connecting flight the next morning, I was violently awoken by an unhinged and narked Travis Bickle type who was not impressed that I had moved into his patch. Luckily for me, a security guard stepped in and saved me from a pummelling that might have put a crimp in my jolly holiday.
Still, a light beating would be preferable to what I think must be the most common type of holiday nightmare; going on holiday with someone that you decide within days you can’t stand. And I ask myself, how many couples have set off on a longed for holiday with one another, only for one to decide that they can’t even bear the sight of the way the other eats crisps, or the way they snort whilst laughing? You know you’re in trouble when the whistling noise their breathing makes in the dead of night, is enough to unleash your inner psychopath and you find youself standing over their sleeping frame with a desperately poised pillow, trembling in your white knuckled grip. On Day Two.
And how many families have set off with another like-minded family of chums to share a Mediterannean villa, only to return to these shores completely estranged after an incident that tested their friendship to breaking point? These bonhomie-busting incidents usually involve money , or a parent playing fast and loose with unwritten friendship rules by distributing excessive discipline to a child that is not his. Or placing hands on a questionable part of a wife that is not his either.
Oh how I want to read these stories! Maybe someone somewhere can set up a site where the victims of such holiday nightmares can unload their rants anonymously. It would be a massive success.
Or maybe they could just use my comments box? Discretion assured….
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