Ohhhh, the sun has got his hat on, Hip Hip Hip Hooray, the sun has got his hat on and he's coming out today. Oh, now we'll all be happy, Hip Hip Hip Hooray, the sun has got his hat on and he's coming out to play. He's been tanning Negroes down in Timbuktu. Now he's coming back to do the same to you. So jump into your sun suit, Hip Hip Hip Hooray, the sun has got his hat on and he's coming out today. Never saw the grass so greener. Never saw the sky so leaner. What a lot of fun for everyone, sleeping in the sun all day. All the little birds are singing. Canterbury Bells are ringing. Pussy on the tiles is wreathed in smiles, sleeping in the sun all day. Hip Hip Hooray!
Ohhhhhh, the sun has.........that's enough of that.
I think we're in the holiday spirit now don't you?
Well it's off to Gatwick we go to catch a flight to Orlando and the start of our three weeks in the sun. Two weeks to be spent around Orlando, visiting as many of the theme parks and beaches as we can fit in, followed by a one-week Caribbean cruise to hopefully recover from the first two weeks.
We'd already decided not to hire a car for our two weeks, preferring instead to use our hotel shuttle service to the Disney parks and to take taxis if we wanted to visit anywhere else. We will however be hiring a car to drive from Orlando to Tampa to pick up the cruise ship and at the end of the cruise, driving back from Tampa to Orlando airport to pick up the flight home.
The flight left on time and arrived on time, the bit in between was made much more bearable due to the fact that all passengers have their own personal entertainment unit. This consists of a small TV screen in the back of your seat and a remote control unit to access the various options on offer. For example there were 7 audio channels to listen to and 6 TV channels to watch. The first 4 TV channels were showing eight different films, two on each channel. Each channel repeating its films throughout the flight so that if you timed it right you could watch 3 different films quite comfortably for the duration of the flight. All films were very current, Tomorrow Never Dies, The Devil's Advocate, The Rainmaker and the overall selection appealed to all age groups. The other two TV channels showed things like BBC comedy, drama and children's TV.
Mind you, with the screen in the back of your seat it was bloody inconvenient. I spent most of the flight kneeling on the arm rests and craning my neck over the head rest to watch anything. You would have thought they must have thought it through at the design stage wouldn't you? Obviously not.
The other thing is, with everyone wearing personal headphones it's difficult to have normal conversations with people or to even get their attention. The stewardesses have resolved this quite well though. If they want to attract someone's attention they whack them on the head with a big mallet. They don't do this randomly though. They wait until the film you're watching has reached a crucial point which needs all your attention before knocking you almost senseless and sweetly asking, "Would you like a drink Sir?"
We swiftly got through Customs and headed for the Virgin Holiday rep at the airport who would direct us to our bus to take us to our hotel. By the way, I don't know what it is about walking through Customs but even though I know I'm not carrying anything illegal I start to walk funny. I can't seem to walk naturally anymore. It's almost like being drunk. I start to meander and that natural rhythm of walking from one end of the Customs hall to the other becomes a nightmare. I walk into the back of the luggage trolley I'm pushing, I bump into Emma and tread on her foot. I'm like a silver ball in a pinball machine careening down the hall and all the time there are these irrational thoughts whirring through my head. Don't walk too fast, they'll think you want a quick getaway, slow down, take it easy. Speed up a bit, you're walking too damn slow now you idiot, they'll think you've got something smuggled in your trousers that's suddenly making you walk like a deformed monkey. Whatever you do, don't start hopping. Just relax, smile at the officers No don't smile they'll think you've got something to hide. Look serious but happy. Look responsible.
By the time I got to the end, Pauline and Emma were there waiting for me. "What took you so long?" they asked, "Do you need the lavatory? We were watching you come through on this security monitor and we thought you'd lost all control of your bodily functions."
"Let's just go shall we?" I said as I made a mental note to dry my right leg at the earliest opportunity.
The hotel is fine, seems to be a family orientated hotel with lots of things set up for children to do. We are given various brochures and vouchers entitling us to hotel discounts and a 'Buy one Get one free' ice cream voucher. We're all feeling tired after the journey and it's getting quite late now, around ten p.m. but before we go to bed I decided to take Emma to the hotel shop and get the free ice cream.
Now I'm not a prejudiced man but....
Serving behind the counter was a black woman with eyes like Marty Feldman, each one pointing in a different direction but never at the person she's talking to. I placed my order three times before it was really my turn to be served and when it was my turn, I stood there silently waiting while she asked me four times what it was that I wanted. Once I'd established it was me she was talking to, I asked her what flavours of ice cream she had and she stood there for all of a minute on auto pilot reciting her well rehearsed litany of different varieties. I couldn't understand a bloody word of what she'd said so I just pointed to some ice cream that looked interesting. The business with her eyes wasn't made any easier by the fact that she was constantly talking jive with all the other blacks in the shop whether they were in front or behind the counter, making it doubly difficult to gauge exactly who she was addressing at any given time.
After standing there in total silence ignoring her frequent requests for one dollar 60 for the ice cream. Emma finally said, "Dad, I think she wants the money." Jolted into action, I thanked the woman and handed over the money still wondering whether I'd just paid for the stuff that the person next to me had just walked off with or whether I was in the clear and could walk away.
I didn't want to upset her but I wasn't sure if she was really still talking to me. She was looking at me, no doubt about that, well one eye was anyway, but the man next to me was beginning to respond to her inane chat as well as me. Of course he may only have thought she was talking to him when in fact she was really talking to me so we could have both been as confused as a fly on a joke plastic dog turd. I was beginning to wonder if she really knew who she was talking to.
The only way out of this as far as I could see, was to wait until everybody stopped talking for a few seconds, smile and get the hell out of there.
Which I did.
I think I got away with it.
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