Then Three Come All At Once

I am on holiday again

I am writing this with my laptop balanced on an excessively tasselled cushion, French windows wide open, listening to a terrible cover band massacring Leonard Cohen’s, ‘Hallelujah.’ It can only mean that I am, once again, on my holidays. This time, I am on the Greek island of Rhodes, sweating through my hairline and thinking about Shirley Valentine about fifty times a day, even though she went to a different island, and is also entirely fictional.

I was not meant to be in Rhodes at all. I was meant to be all hands on deck in E14, but a friend of ours had a complicated domestic situation that meant that she could not go on holiday and she offered it to us for an absolute steal. We had the means and the time and we had never been to Rhodes, so we said yes please and here we are. I say here we are, but it did involve a horrendous flight with everyone but us and the captain being children and screaming the place down for four hours.

One family had two, particularly charming children, who when they weren’t screaming because they didn’t like being on a plane, just enjoyed screaming ‘NOOOOO’ into each other’s faces and running around a packed aeroplane attempting to open the doors, mid flight. When one of the little charmers decided to take apart Jason’s chair while he was in the loo and I asked him not to do that, I was called a ‘Bloody, silly, cow,’ by the mother in that way that is about you but not directed to you. Passive aggressive slagging mid air is not something I signed up for.

At this point, about three hours in and with only another forty years of listening to her demonic kids to go, I stood up, looked straight at her and said: ‘It’s my husband’s chair and he already had to move once because your child kicked him in the back.’ She looked away and said in an aggrieved tone; ‘He can’t help it. He’s autistic. You shouldn’t have come on a plane if you didn’t like kids.’ To which she got; ‘Actually, I shouldn’t have to ask you to stop your fucking kids dismantling the seat.’ We settled on a bristling, but silent cessation of hostilities because I think she was well aware by this point that I was in a fighting mood and everyone else on the plane with the exception of the twenty six (I know there were twenty six of them, and they were going to her mother’s wedding, because when she wasn’t threatening: ‘If you don’t stop trying to open the plane door, I’ll throw you out myself,’ she did like to talk about it a lot), other people in her party, were going to be on my side if it came to fisticuffs.

When we got through passport control and realised we had an hour and a half on a coach ahead of us, I had a nightmare that their group might also be on the coach with us. Thankfully, our friend had booked a fancy, all inclusive resort with no kids allowed, and they straggled by, kids still screaming, to make someone else’s life a misery for a week or two. I am really hoping they pushed the boat out and are staying for two weeks, so there is no chance of a return flight in their charming company. That, plus evil sandwiches that tasted like boiled cardboard on the plane and the very real chance we would get to the hotel after dinner had me close to tears on the coach. I was that lethal combination of hangry and angry.

The only thing that cheered me up en route was the couple behind us, who had the following conversation:

Her: ‘I’ve just seen a goat.’

Him: ‘A what?’

Her: ‘A goat.’

Him: (utterly deadpan. Almost bored) ‘Did you say you just saw a ghost?’

Her: (also deadpan) ‘No. A GOAT.’

Him: (completely uninterested actually)‘Oh.’

By the time they had ascertained it was not a ghost, the goat in question was long gone. I’m not sure he would have mustered any enthusiasm if she had said, ‘Yes. I did see a ghost actually.’

We have never done an all inclusive holiday before. Jason has never been on a package holiday at all and the last time I went on one, I was pregnant with Tilly and she turns twenty five in three weeks. I went to Cyprus with my dad and a bunch of outraged pensioners who all assumed we were a couple, despite me calling him ‘DAD’ in foghorn tones for the duration of our stay. We were roundly shunned from all the activities on offer, not that I cared much as long as someone kept shoving Greek salad under my nose.

Jason and I have been idly dreaming about maybe, one day going to somewhere like the Maldives or Bali and spending two weeks snorkelling and sunning ourselves while being fed delicious snacks. We thought this holiday might be a good trial to see if we actually liked living a sybaritic life of excess and suncream. It’s not something we’ve ever had the chance to try before and finding out we don’t like it after an 18 hour trip round the world that costs our entire life savings seemed like a bad idea.

By the time we and our belongings were spewed out of the coach into the lobby of the hotel, it really felt like we’d been round the world to get here. When someone offered me a hot, towel and shoved a glass of champagne into my hand, and someone else took my suitcases away to put them in my room, I really did have a little cry. Especially when it turned out that the dining room was still open and I could run downstairs and fill my face with things that weren’t blotting paper sandwiches.