I was reading one of the female magazines in our house this morning, I sneak a look at them every now and again just to see how Jennifer Aniston is getting on (who is she anyway), and near the back of one of them I found an article called "Eating Out", so thinking it would be a useful guide to fancy eateries I started to read on...The numbknut who had written said guide was seriously suggesting that I get on a flight to visit restaurants as far afield as Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan and that such trips could now be undertaken for minimal cost and would be well worth a quick two day visit just to eat at Wongs Noodle Shop in Taipen.
Bloody idiot.
And of course it got me thinking...
It got me thinking of the first time that my parents ever went abroad for their holidays, it was 1974 and they went without me and my brother as we were considered "sensible enough" to leave at home with just our posh auntie around the corner to keep an eye on us - I was 16 and my brother was 14 - Ha! Ha! Ha!- How little they knew of us.
They flew from Manchester Air-o-drome as it was known in those far distant days on a Boeing 727 (perhaps the noisiest aircraft in the world, ever) operated by Dan-Air. Those of a vintage old enough to remember Dan-Air will also recall that they were better known as Dan-Dare due to the fact that they had only just got rid of their fleet of Comet aircraft in favour of Boeing - again readers who are not of the correct vintage will wonder what a Comet was - it was a British passenger jet liner, the first in general use in the UK, and it was a wonderful innovation for the well-heeld booted and suited jet set.
OK so its square windows meant that cracks soon appeared in the fuselage and they fell our of the sky like homing pigeons in a thunderstorm, but still, we British have always been pioneers and over in Seattle the Boeing designers regarded our live market research with interest and thunk a while on the subject before inventing round windows.
But back to our mum and dad, standing in the departure lounge at Manchester Air-o-drome, our dad in his best work suit and tie, our mum in her best summer frock and a good white leather handbag, both trying to look as though they were of the jet set age and well used to this sort of thing, on their suitcases were false stickers which could be bought in Woolworths declaring that they had journeyed to such exotic places as Paris, Milan and Torquay they pretended that jetting between continents for a long weekend was "de riguer" for their lifestyle, my mother may have even used the phrase "de riguer" at the check-in desk when asked if she had anything to declare.
Seven days in Lloret-de-Mar on the newly built Spanish Coast del Sol was their destination, how exotic does that sound, purchased from the Co-op travel agent, it was a "package deal" which meant that you were owned by the tour operator from the minute you stepped across the boundary of Manchester Air-o-drome, everything that you did, saw or ate for the next seven days would be decided by your "rep" and your "rep" was there to meet you at the check-in desk to make sure that you didn't chicken out and run all the way home as some people did when they first set eyes on the Dan-Air 727's line up outside.
Our mother extolled the virtues of "our rep" when she got home, she was "a lovely girl" apparently, who "knew ever so much about Spain", and "we don't know what we would have done without her". It was "our rep" who helped you off the 727, wobbly kneed and vowing never to fly again even though you had to fly back home in the same aircraft in seven days time, it was "our rep" ("lovely girl, knew ever so much about Spain") who helped you with your baggage when those lazy Spaniards had bothered to empty the hold of the plane ("they go to sleep in the middle of the afternoon you know, oh yes, they call it a sierra") and it was "our rep" who lined you all up in the arrivals hall and called out your names one by one and directed you to the correct bus that was waiting outside to take you to you lovely new hotel.
And your hotel was lovely, ever so lovely ("we had our own bathroom you know, didn't have to share one down the hallway, oh no") and the next morning you were instructed to meet "our rep" in the lounge downstairs where she was to instruct you on which tours (at additional cost) you should undertake during your seven day sojourn.
And you bought the tours off her, and she took you to far flung places like a huge dining hall just outside of Lloret de Mar where you all sat with your coats on ("because it gets a bit nippy at night you know, even in Spain it does") at huge long dining benches and watched a circus act juggle flaming torches before some flamenco dancers came and, well, danced, and afterwards you were served with a chicken leg in a raffia basket with some salad and rice ("I've never had rice with a main course before, don't like it though, it looks too much like maggots"), and if you were lucky a waiter came around with a strange looking wine bottle with a long pouring spout and instead of tipping the wine into your glass he made you tilt your head back and he poured it straight into your mouth while another man took a photo of the whole incident and sold it to you for a weeks wage.
And the next day while you walked "along the front" near your hotel another man with a camera strolled up to you and in perfect Spanglais asked you to hold his monkey for him, and before you could shoo him away he'd thrust a small monkey in a knitted pullover into your arms and had taken your photograph and charged you a weeks wage for it.
When they returned back to England and the busom of their home - which me and Ned had almost managed to tidy up after a weeks worth of partying, shame about the bin full of beer cans that we never dreamed would be a dead give-away - our mum had brought us a present each.
I got one of those wine pourer things with the long spout that you don't use to fill glasses with but use to fill your mouth straight from the bottle - and Ned got the strangest thing that I have ever seen passed off as a holiday present.
It was a small white leather dog, about six inches high it sat on its haunches looking for all the world like the HMV dog, a badly made white leather version fot he HMV dog granted, but still. Apparently our mum had been suckered into buying it by a youth who sat outside on their hotel steps making them all day long, she'd paid him a weeks wage for this unidentifyable stuffed leather toy.
But the wierdest thing about the leather dog was that it had gold chains stiched to it in random places and was then covered in sequins of assorted colours - it was by far the thing-of-worst-taste that I have ever seen and I did enquire of my mother whether or not the youth who made them was in fact blind for which I received a cuff around the back of the head.
Ned was stunned by his holiday present, he still is to this day.
Our mum could tell he was stunned and not too impressed whilst I, in contrast, was already trying out my wine pouring skills with a bottle of Long Life lager inside the pourer thing, managing to pour said Long Life lager all over the kitchen floor and my face - she took the leather dog off him and put it on the mantlepiece declaring "I like it anyway".
And there it stayed, we tried to put it in the wastebin on many an occasion but ours was a very chauvanistic house and as us males never emptied things like bins, or in fact never did any housework whatsoever, our mum would always uncover our subterfuge and replace the leather dog back to its rightful place on the mantelpiece.
It stayed on our mantelpiece, impressing all our visitors, for many, many years until eventually it came time for our mum to depart this world and go and live with Jesus in the bingo hall in the sky, whereupon, on the day after her funeral, our dad took the white leather still sequined dog outside and drop-kicked it down the driveway where it landed perfectly in the bin and with no female in the house to remove it, it went off with the binmen the following Monday.
And I've never seen it since.
More rubbish from the JerryChicken biography can be found here.
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