Homeward Bound - Sunday

‘We just have three more pick-ups then I’ll be back to you in forty minutes with details of your check-in desk.’ Chirrups the annoying, tubby Newcastle girl, who only knows a lot of Greek because she’s shagged half the resort waiters in the last six months. We’re on the coach home and already I’m stressed. I’m still not sure the driver put both cases on board the bus, which could be a mixed blessing as I’ve a feeling we might be a bit overweight on baggage, as well as personally. The all-inclusive package majored on quantity not quality, but if it’s available…

‘Glad we didn’t stay there.’ I say to my wife, as the coach stops outside a budget option, with rooms on to the main road. She shushes me in disapproval. Apparently I have volume control issues. Something to do with pool water in both ears and playing my iPod at high volumes to drown out any chance of conversation with fellow guests wanting free, no obligation valuations on a home 2,000 miles away. I watch, as a hot and stressed chavvy family of five climb on the bus – not that I’m judgemental. The squealing kids are high on sugar and the tattooed parents look half-pissed. The wife is wearing an unflattering crop-top, showing a vast stomach with a pierced belly button that might prove challenging at security. The oafish-looking father of at least one of the kids, judging by the noses, is sadly sporting an England football top. It makes you want to give up.

‘Gate five, enjoy your flight home.’ Chimes Geordie Shore, as I think endure, more like. The big-arsed girl exits stage left with a swarthy-looking driver named Spiros. They clearly have time, or something, to fill before the next incoming flight. I grab the bags and start limping as fast as I can towards the appointed gate.

‘There’s no point in hurrying,’ says my wife annoyingly. ‘You can’t beat the system.’ God, I hate it when she’s right.

Needless to say the family of five future claimants are right behind us in the check-in queue. One that moves at a sloth’s pace, for the next forty minutes, while the youngest budding My Fat Gypsy Wedding starlet, whacks my ankles with one of those ubiquitous ride on cases the Dragons' Den moguls turned down. And they say travel broadens the mind.

‘Can you drink any more?’ Asks my wife, as we halt outside the scanners and join the undignified queue of quaffers all necking as much water and fizzy soft drink as they can hold, before being forced to bin all liquids. There’s a small mountain of unopened cans and bottles being harvested by a sly-faced cleaner. I fully expect to see, spookily similar items on sale at five times the price, just fifteen yards past the x-ray machine. The stress is building and that’s before the inevitable pat down by a vast Cretan with body odour and halitosis, after I set off the scanner buzzer despite having stripped to little more than my underpants and a t-shirt. I swear that back surgeon left some sort of surgical instrument in there somewhere. I should sue, like everyone else.

‘Nothing worthwhile in duty free.’ Reports my wife as I hop back and forth, guarding the bags but desperate for a piss after drinking several litres of water in short order. ‘It’s all a bit overpriced.’ She continues. Like the London property market then, I think, as I leave her with the hand luggage and check out the grim Greek plumbing for the last time. Look, I’m not putting the toilet paper in an adjacent flyblown bin, no matter how many languages you put the sign in. You’re in the EEC now - sort your sewerage out.

‘We have a zero tolerance policy for disruptive behaviour.’ Warns the camp cabin steward, seconds before announcing the ninety-minute air-traffic delay. Then the five-year old kid with a nose stud, sitting behind, starts kicking my seat.

Five and a half hours of coughing, sneezing, seat battering and incipient deep-vein thrombosis later – the knee length socks with shorts are best kept to the imagination – we plunge into a murky Gatwick airport.

I need a break.

-----

Social housing or private sector - I've seen it all. Learn about it with the exclusive content ebook on Amazon, here

http://amzn.to/ttGZ4j

US Readers: http://amzn.to/vXpFJf

Spanish Fly - Sunday

‘I’m not sure we belong here.’ I tell my wife as we search in vain for a couple of non-towelled sun beds. You have to invade the pool early to get a space before these surprisingly sprightly ex-Nazi youths, stake a claim.

‘You are just being foreign-phobic again.’ Hisses my wife, ‘Bet you couldn’t take that attitude at work.’ She continues, as I spot the only free beds are next to the shaded shower where I refuse to soak myself before jumping in the pool. Needless to say the portly Bavarians all follow orders.

She’s right. I don’t discriminate where property is concerned. Not only is it illegal but it’s counter-productive. Without offshore money there’d certainly be a lot of London agents looking to renegotiate their rents, and lazy journalists might need to leave the Central Line for their next glossy interior story.

‘I mean who thought people still wore Speedos outside of the Olympic diving pool?’ I say, as the man I’ve nicknamed Dead Elvis strides by. This scrawny octogenarian sports an improbable silver-coloured quiff and leopard print trunks. His leathery skin is tanned to ebony brown and has more lines than a cyclone affected weather map. I wouldn’t let him within five miles of a school.

‘And here come the Munich festival crew.’ I grumble, as a group of retired German bankers - who else can afford to stop work while they can still herd shopping trolleys round an Asda car park – arrive at the pool bar and order their first beers of the morning. In the cheaper, locals’ bars behind the beach, unemployed Spanish men are also drinking alcohol with a spooky symmetry.

The overweight German men are already in their skimpy, unappetisingly saggy swimsuits, and their perma-tanned wives sport garish prints on their blouses that match their varicose-veined legs. The males wear more gold reserves around their necks and wrists than the Greek economy can muster. I start to yearn for some kids to disrupt the smug air of entitlement and maybe wet this bunch on the outside with the sort of bombs that didn’t remodel Coventry.

‘Don’t check you work emails.’ Scolds my wife as we get out of the midday sun ahead of the mad dogs. I’ve just had a shameful rant that the overworked maid, on a minimum wage sweating in a nylon uniform, hasn’t cleaned our room yet. The naivety of my punk rock anarchist days never seemed further away.

‘I need to know what they are up to.’ I tell my wife switching on my netbook and failing to find a strong enough Wi-Fi signal again. We’ve changed room once already and the receptionist insists on greeting me with a curt, Guten Morgen before breakfast every day. I can’t make another fuss.

‘The office will survive without you.’ Continues my wife so reasonably I want to bark a couple of angry Halts Mauls at her. The paradox is, I ached to escape the office and now I feel like starting a tunnel to get back there. Maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome, my geography is all over the place, so who knows?

‘What did that achieve?’ Asks my wife as we go back to the hotel terrace for a pricey coffee, as there is no kettle in the room. We’ll be taking the tea bags back home again then.

‘Not a lot.’ I acknowledge. The asinine work emails I’ve just scanned made me testier than ever and now my shorts are feeling so tight I reckon I’ll need to concede to the next waist size up when we next travel. All this food and alcohol is starting to take its toll, my liver is grumbling as much as I do and I’ve a feeling I’ll still be finding sand in places I didn’t know I had, in February.

‘No we don’t want any fake sunglasses.’ I snap at the African lad flogging knock-off designer shades with authentic looks and all the UV protection you’d get popping you pants on your head. Then the smokers sit next to us, something I now find as offensive as someone squatting down and taking a dump alongside you.

Auf Wiedersehen. 

------



Afford your next holiday buy buying wisely - the property ebook here:

http://amzn.to/ttGZ4j