Here is a story about a
terrible holiday. The first thing that went wrong was that the
country we were going to decided to have a war a few days before we were
going there. So that was the end of that. But the plane we were going
on was stopping off at Rome. So rather than not having a holiday at all,
we thought we'd go to Italy. Very nice. See the sights. Go to the
beaches and get fat with pasta. We were at the airport waiting for the
plane and a friend of mine who lived near the airport had come to see us
off. So we were having a few drinks in the bar and joking with this
friend of mine, Peter, saying 'Poor old you in cold rainy England. This
time tomorrow we'll be in Italy on the beach.' And I went down to see if
the flight had been called and discovered it had gone. It was a
terribly stupid mistake. We hadn't checked the time of departure. I was
sure it was going 9 something but it was going at 19 something which of
course is 7 o'clock. So we were actually there in the bar when it went
without us. We were determined to have our holiday. The irony was
that Peter was now going back to his comfortable home and we were stuck
in the cold and the rain at 10 o'clock at night. You see, it was a
charter flight so we couldn't book another one. We lost our money and
all the other flights were booked up. Well, we got a train to the South
Coast and caught the midnight boat across the Channel, froze to death
all night, it was a terrible crossing with people being sick everywhere.
And eventually we got to I think it was Dieppe and then a train to
Paris. We got to Paris very early in the morning and I thought we'd be
all right. You see, we now had to hitch hike because a lot of our money
had gone on the boat and the train, but I thought 'Well, it's very early
in the morning, we'll get a good place to start hitching and we'll soon
be well on our way.' We got to the start of the motorway and I just
couldn't believe it. I've never seen so many people trying to hitch a
lift in all my life. Well, it was then it suddenly dawned on me. It was
August the first wasn't it? and on August the first in France the whole
population goes on holiday and there were hundreds of people, stopping
the traffic, banging on drivers' windows trying to persuade them to stop
and give them a lift. It was chaos, disastrous. Well, we got
moving eventually. A lorry driver gave us a lift. And then things
started to get better, as we got further south and it got warmer, you
know, and we thought 'At last, the holiday's beginning.' Well, we camped
that night and we then set off again the next day. We got some lifts,
and met a great chap who owned a vineyard. He took us back to his farm
and we tasted all this wine -Burgundy, my favorite - and we had a great
time. Now the holiday really was starting. Well, he took us back to the
motorway, and there we were by the side of the road, the sun was
shining, we were a bit merry, sang a few songs - you know, life was
great. And we got another lift from ... well he was a maniac, complete
maniac. He seemed nice enough, but within a few minutes he was driving
at about a hundred miles an hour, overtaking on the inside on the
motorway, with his stereo at full volume, one hand on the wheel and well
the other hand on various parts of Susan's body. So what could I do?
I've never been so frightened in all my life. We were absolutely
-helpless. Susan tried to say that she had to go to the toilet, but he
wouldn't stop then she pretended to be sick in his car, and he stopped
in seconds. He had this really flash expensive car, and as soon as he
stopped we just jumped out and ran. The worst thing was this tremendous
drop from feeling so good to thinking that we were going to get killed.
We eventually got down to the south of France and began to have a good
time, and then down to Italy. We ran out of money, of course, but apart
from that, it was good. I've never had such a tiring holiday. When we
got back, I was exhausted. At the end of the holiday, I needed a
holiday!
