Checking Out - Wednesday

‘Have you checked the drawers?’ I ask my wife anxiously, as we prepare to leave the hotel room. I’ve been preparing since we arrived actually. She looks at me with a not too well disguised air of distain - she wouldn’t do too well in property sales – then says. ‘We didn’t put anything in the drawers.’

Strictly speaking she’s right. All our possessions have either remained in the suitcases or been hung in the one wardrobe area we’ve utilised. Unless a malicious cleaner has been secreting socks, airline tickets and EU medical cards in the entirely superfluous drawers hotels provide, there’ll be nothing in there other than dust and whichever bible the chosen religion has placed in-situ. I still look just in case. Not even Gideons have bothered. Past saving I guess - the profession is on my passport.

‘One last visit to the loo.’ Announces my wife while I fret as I do in the office. Under the bed is clear, behind the curtains a couple of dead mosquitoes and the mini bar is as we found it – once I’ve taken out our own drinks and half a pack of over-priced peanuts. Still I have that corrosive doubt that something will go wrong, a legacy of several thousand home sales where disappointment and disaster are default options. And this is before the trauma of the flight home.

I don’t need another piss but my bowels have early turbulence that comes with travel of any kind. I take a last glance at the unfamiliar sanitary ware brand. German I’m guessing. They’ve taken over most other functions in the hotel, as the pickled fish at breakfast confirmed first morning. Hansgrohe, I muse, as I find that the mind is willing but the bladder empty.

It’s an odd obsession but then I have to find something to say about bathrooms in my property details. I’ve been flogging homes so long I remember when avocado and whisper grey suites were popular, plus that terrible turd brown colour that always showed the lime-scale no matter how hard you scrubbed. It will be back. Everything comes back round the u-bend eventually.

‘That’s odd.’ I tell my wife as I toss the towels on the floor and decide not to save the planet for the seventh time out of seven days. She asks why out of duty.

‘We’ve got Roca Spanish fittings at home, they’ve got German bogs in Spain and nobody uses Ideal Standard anywhere as far as I can tell.’

‘I mean if you are marketing a company don’t use Standard in the name.’ I continue as we squeeze into the lift beside a pot-bellied man with body odour and a wife-beater vest on. He grunts a guttural greeting and I know I’m safe to ignore him.

‘That’s like naming your air bag manufacturing firm: Statutory Minimum Requirements.’ I ramble aimlessly, as my stomach lurches again and the lift descends to where I’m offered someone else’s bill.

‘It’s because we changed rooms.’ Explains my wife to the receptionist who still thinks we’re German despite our name and demeanour. Problem sorted, our bar bill was less or I’d have given him a couple of effusive Danke Schons and scarpered, we wait for the transfer bus. And wait.

‘They have you out here forty minutes early then dump you at the airport three hours before the flight for who exactly?’ I seethe, as I feel the sweat bubbling up and my flight socks slipping.

‘Just relax.’ Soothes my better half, throwing a look of apology at the other couple that arrived with us. We didn’t speak to for a week and now she wants to make friends. I talk to enough people I don’t like at work, I’m not going to seek out bores who want to discuss property prices by the poolside.

‘See the driver thinks he deserves a tip for taking us to where we’ve paid to go.’ I tell my wife as I spot a familiar collecting basket at the front of the coach. Pedro, Juan, Spiros, Abdul; they all want to flush out your cash for doing what I expect to be Standard and only just Ideal.

My life is a tangled chain.

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Last Call For Gate 13 - Saturday

‘Terrific.’ I groan sitting knees wedged against the coach seat in front, flight bag balanced on knee. ‘Here comes the jocular Geordie’. My wife looks up from her Kindle. How does she do that read peacefully and not fret about the travel arrangements thing?

‘Just don’t listen if she bugs you.’ Suggests my wife before looking down again. I can’t help it. The false-smiled woman hasn’t been seen around the hotel, bar the welcome meeting, since we arrived. By the look of her tan she’s been on her back most of the week on a sun bed she didn’t have to reserve before dawn. And by the look she just gave the Greek porter she’s been on her back most evenings too, no doubt enjoying a stifado or two.

‘Hiya everybody.’ Trills the woman over the tinny microphone. ‘Did we all have a great time?’ A few mumbled responses echo round the coach. The representative has that pulled-back, Essex facelift hairstyle going on, and I’m not buying her false frivolity any more than I purchased her over-priced trips to bars where she gets a kickback and a free lunch.

‘Now has everybody got their passports?’ She quizzes with a grin.

‘What sort of cretin wouldn’t check?’ I say to my wife, just as Ms Miserable, the new divorcee, throws a hand to her mouth and rushes to the front of the coach. Luckily she still had the hotel room safe key in her handbag.

‘Just sit back and enjoy the rest of your holiday now.’ Says the Geordie lass, once Ms Miserable is back on board.

‘Enjoy roasting in a coach with wheezy air conditioning?’ I mimic to my wife just as a mum with a seven year old, asks if they can use the hotel toilet before we leave. They’ve already been on board for an hour and a half as the pick-ups are all about what suits the holiday company. We are still going to be at the airport three hours before the plane leaves – not including flight delays.

As the coach trundles through town I see the estate agent outside his office chatting to a shopkeeper, cigarette in hand. They are doubtless bemoaning the state of the market. We do the same, just under an umbrella. It was dark when we arrived and now I get to see what the place looks like beyond the narrow strip of tourist shops. It’s a dump. We pass several closed down shopping centres, windows whitewashed out, not even the British dodge of rent free charity shop leases, to give a pretence of affluence. I spy numerous for sale boards that have clearly been in-situ for months, if not years. It seems having disused white goods in the front garden is popular here too, that and a huge f**k off Alsatian on a long chain, to deter postmen and estate agents doing leaflet drops.

‘Looks like their property market is worse than ours.’ I tell my wife as we pass dozens of half-built units rising from the dust, in a post-apocalyptic-like landscape. Coarse scrub is growing round many of the skeletal properties as nature follows the banks in reclaiming the homes. A sun-bleached hording proclaims luxury villas to be constructed but all I see is several hectares of streets laid to plots, crumbling kerbstones and rusting light-posts - testimony to the folly of expecting property values to perpetually ignore Isaac Newton’s laws of gravity.

‘Just don’t think about work now.’ Mutters my wife distractedly. Then the holiday rep is back on the microphone.

‘I’m passing out a questionnaire’ She trills.

‘Big mistake.’ I say quietly. We find punters use feedback forms as a forum to grumble, or extort compensation.

‘Next it’ll be the charity they’re supporting wanting your leftover Euros.’ I prophesise and sure enough the bag starts to come back over everyone’s heads. I just wish I could predict the lottery numbers so accurately.

‘I feel heavy.’ Says my wife as I pass the sparsely filled bag to the couple behind, unburdened by my contribution. They say travel broadens the mind. It certainly broadens the waist.

‘Diet starts tomorrow.’ She announces.

More slim pickings.

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On A Jet Plane - Saturday

Rain is lashing against the bedroom window. I’ve been awake forever despite the fact we’ll still be at the airport several hours before the flight crew. My mind has moved from fretting about contracts, offers and weekly statistics to the unconvincing laws of aeronautics. Laws that allow several hundred tons of metal, stuffed full of pasty Britons, to leave terra firma and break through the blanket of grey drizzle swamping this green and pleasant land to finally see some f***ing sunshine.

‘Get off that computer.’ Urges my wife. ‘Surely nobody wants to read your Blog that badly?’ She has a point, but then you don’t write for anybody else and you certainly don’t write for the money now that everyone wants free content.

‘Have you seen my list?’ She continues, hint of panic in her voice. I want to ask which one? She’s been compiling them for weeks now and they are probably more extensive than the pilots’ pre take-off one. There’s the things to check checklist, the clothes list, the wash kit list, the electronics and accessories list, the items to unplug in the house list and there’s a master list somewhere, in case she forgets one of the lists. I’m just listless.

‘I’m sure we’ve forgotten something.’ She frets as I pull into the airport car park. ‘All we really need are tickets, passports and cash.’ I tell her. And even the Euros I kept waiting for a better rate on, might be superfluous by the time we land the other end. I’ve kept a few Drachma somewhere in the back of my clothes drawer. I spotted them when I was searching for those flight socks that are supposed to restrict deep vein thrombosis but I’m guessing won’t be a lot of help if we fly into a mountain.

‘How can they justify that much for a weeks parking?’ I grumble as we stand in the snaking check-in queue and I scan our fellow travellers, trying to guess who’ll end up on our hotel coach and whom I’d actually want to speak to. ‘It’s a captive audience.’ Says my wife, moving forward two feet and setting her bag down again. ‘Yes but I only want to park there for seven days not buy the bloody freehold.’ I tell her loudly. Several people in the queue look at me sternly and decide they don’t want to be on my airport transport either.

‘Did you pack the bag yourself? Quizzes the woman at the check-in gracelessly. I want to spew some sarcasm. It’s taken forty minutes already and my back is aching even before I’m crammed into a seat with legroom that would challenge Snow White’s seven travelling companions. But I know not to rile officials after that run in with the Trading Standards Office.

Travel has become an ordeal that leaves you needing another holiday. All thanks to a few extremists who use their chosen god - one that has kept a pretty low profile for the last two thousand years despite those superpowers you’d want to show off - to justify terrorism. I hate playground bullies even after all these years.

The fact is I didn’t pack my bag, my wife did. But I lie like every other bloke in the line. I really find it hard to touch my toes nowadays and bending over to the snap of a latex glove, while some officious oddball with an attitude - and a tube of lube - isn’t going to make four hours on a saggy seat squab any more comfortable.

‘Priority boarders to the gate now.’ Announces the tannoy as I sit reeking of several different after shaves, none of which I bought. I smell like the camp barman pulling over-priced pints for nervous flyers in the mock English pub. Even I won’t drink before lunchtime. I’m not a chartered surveyor.

‘How come they go before us?’ I gripe to my wife. I’ve already seen the disabled passengers pass and suspect some are just too fat and lazy to walk.

‘They pay more to get what they want.’ She answers.

It’s the same in the property market. Time to go.

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Thrust and lift permitting, back in a week. If you see an estate agent on your holiday buy him a drink if it's after lunchtime. It might be me. Just don't ask about property market as a punch in the face may offend. For those left behind if you miss the Blog download the book my wife hasn't bothered to read. Cheaper than a duty free pint.

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