Malta 2006 - Day 9

We decided to take a trip to the island of Gozo today. Declining Sandra’s offer of a fabulously fabulous day out for only five hundred pounds each or some such ridiculous amount, we got the bus and ferry for a couple of quid.

We turned up at the bus station with about five minutes to spare before the bus was due to leave only to find a really long queue of people and no bus. Ten minutes later and with the queue even longer a car sped into the bus station and a flustered looking bloke jumped out, opened the back door and dragged out a rather large dog. It was one of those dogs that did exactly what it wanted to…whenever it wanted to. The dog was rushing around the bus station in a manic fashion with its nose to the ground while its owner tried to keep up with it, arms and lead stretched to the limit and running along behind. Then, more through luck than judgement on the owner’s part, the dog rushed into the small office. The next thing that happened was the dog’s owner had climbed into one of the distant parked buses and rushed it round to where we were queuing. The number of people in the queue had been growing by the minute and we weren’t even sure that we’d get on or not. We were among the last half a dozen or so people to get on but couldn’t get a seat so I had the prospect ahead of me of a thirty-five minute journey trying to stand up in the aisle without swaying around and bashing people on the head with my bag at every lurch of the bus. It was another ninety degree day and the oppressive heat on the bus was only alleviated whenever the bus was on the move. As soon as it stopped it was like Coco the Clown had quietly sneaked up behind me and tipped a bucket of perspiration over my head. As if this wasn’t bad enough we had to get through some major road works. There weren’t any temporary traffic lights and the traffic flow was being controlled by men with walkie-talkies. This all added much more time to the journey and a lot more buckets of water from Coco.

Still, we made it to the ferry, had a very pleasant crossing and once on Gozo we made our way to the capital Victoria. We ignored the hordes of taxi drivers offering to take us and got the bus for 30p. When we got there, as usual, our map wasn’t up to much. It didn’t show the bus station that we’d arrived at, we couldn’t see any street names so consequently we had no idea where we were.

I felt quite at home really.

But using Pauline’s intuition and common sense we soon found our way up a steep road to the cathedral and the citadel. It was a relief to get inside the cool stone buildings and away from Coco the Clown who was still stalking me in the heat wherever I went. After a very pleasant couple of hours in Victoria it was a bus back to the ferry on which we had a great snack of cheese pasties and beer for very little money and arrived at the hotel by 3.30 p.m. Pauline spent the rest of the afternoon by the pool.

I didn’t.

TRUE LIFT STORY NO. 4

We were in the lift on the way down. It stopped at floor six, the lift helpfully said, “Floor number six. Doors opening. Doors closing.” and a young couple got in.

He was the biggest bloke I’ve ever seen.

He had to get in the lift sideways. He wasn’t particularly fat, just big. Think Geoff Capes on steroids. No forget that, Geoff Capes was on steroids. Just think Geoff Capes.

This bloke was so big you could place him down in the middle of Trafalgar Square and use him as a roundabout.

This bloke was so big I could have jogged around him once and used up my entire exercise quota for one day. All right, I know my exercise quota isn’t very high, it’s quite low in fact; well it’s virtually non-existent to tell you the truth but don’t start picking holes. It’s just an analogy that’s all.

This bloke was so big I only came up to his shoulders.

This bloke was so big he had to duck his head before entering the lift.

As this couple got in I felt the lift bounce down a few inches so I casually grabbed hold of the hand rail behind me and mentally checked out the position of the emergency button.

The lift stopped again, this time at floor three. “Floor number three. Doors opening,” the bloody lift said, as ever always stating the bleeding obvious. The doors opened and there stood an elderly couple blinking in the usual startled manner as they realised the lift doors had opened and there didn’t appear to be much room to get in. “Come on,” the little old lady said, “we’re only little.”

She got in all right but as soon as her husband stepped in the overload alarm went off. Panic set in and the poor little old man and his wife rushed out of the lift laughing off their embarrassment amid shouts of “Get out you fat sods” from the big bloke and me.

Of course if I’d had my way I would have taken a census of who might have been close to overloading the lift entirely on his own and thrown him overboard for the good of the rest of the party. But as I was squashed up in a corner with the big bloke’s armpit in my face I wasn’t in much of a position to move let alone talk.