Cyprus 2000 - Day 1

Emma has offered to write the first day for me. I might as well give up and hand it all over to her. I can't compete with this.

Dad’s Diary

By

Emma (Age 13)

Well woke up, it’s the big day and nothing big has actually happened………yet. Emma’s running around in her towel, Pauline’s also running around but in clothes and I’m, well, I’m standing here trying to remember what I need to do. The taxi’s arrived, I’m surprised to see it’s quite big - six seats and everything being loaded in. The taxi driver is driving a bit too quickly for my liking and what makes it worse is ‘Invicta FM’ is playing in the background. We’re changing lanes rather swiftly and we’ve driven through the freak place “Kings Hill”.

We’ve arrived at the airport and I’m pushing the luggage around, don’t know where I’m going but I’m pushing it anyway. We’ve found where to check in, well actually Pauline has and now we’ve found the flight has been delayed by two whole flippin’ hours. The women will be shopping, God knows what I’ll be doing.

I’m eating Harry Ramsden’s World Famous Fish And Chips although they don’t actually taste that good. Now I’m sitting reading the paper and listening to ‘Indian Clubs’ falling to the ground behind me as the juggler keeps dropping them.

We’re going. There seems to be a swarm of shaven heads and earrings all around me and big men with big tattoos. We’re loading on and I’m trying to be funny with Emma and telling my best jokes but all she can seem to say is, “Oh, that was so funny, you know? I just forgot to laugh.” No one’s in our seats this year – thank God – and everything’s going just peachy.

We’re on the plane. I’m eating, Pauline’s coughing and Emma’s listening to music – I think. We’ve eaten and Emma’s gone to the loo…see I told you things would get more exciting, anyway we’ve landed.

I’ve got one suitcase from the carousel but missed the other one – I don’t think I was really with it, you know. Our rep’s called Victor. Emma and I are discussing whether he’s gay or on drugs. I think gay but Emma doesn’t, oh well can’t agree on everything.

We’ve checked in and I don’t have a bloomin’ clue where we’re going. We’ve ended up at the foot of some stairs and that’s all I can tell you. We’ve finally found our room and I can already see things that aren’t right.

THE END

Cyprus 2000 - Day 2

We’re in Paphos, Cyprus, staying in self-catering apartments in what they call a hotel/apartment complex which basically means that not only do you have your own kitchen and bedrooms but also have many of the facilities offered by a hotel. The best thing is not having to get up at the crack of 8 or 9 am to go down for breakfast, we can take our time and do what we want when we want. Pauline’s already gone through her list of complaints with the receptionist – so no change there then and because of this I’m feeling at home already. Victor, our poofy rep. on drugs has arranged a get-together at the very civilised hour of 11.30 am. When we got there we sat down with about six or seven other couples/families who arrived at the same time as us. Victor performed his welcome speech and we were all finished within half an hour. I couldn’t help noticing the bloke at the next table to me had a ‘CFC’ tattoo on his upper arm That’s the insignia of the world’s worst soccer hooligans isn’t it? Won’t be making eye contact with him for the rest of the holiday that’s for sure. There’s also a middle-aged woman with some sort of tattoo covering most of her right shoulder and shoulder blade. Couldn’t make out what it was supposed to be though, it just looked like someone had been sick down her back. She wasn’t with the ‘CFC’ tattooed man so God knows what kind of people we’re mixing with.

I spent so much time concentrating on trying to figure out what the woman’s tattoo was that I didn’t listen to a word that Victor said. Consequently, whenever Pauline wanted to discuss the points that he’d raised I was on shaky ground. All I could do was um and ah and finally agree with whatever she said.

There’s a notice on the wall of our bathroom. It says :

IN ORDER TO AVOID BLOCKAGES YOU ARE KINDLY REQUESTED

NOT TO PUT ANYTHING DOWN THE TOILET

PLEASE USE THE BIN PROVIDED

Ever tried to poo into a pedal bin? It’s not easy. The art is getting your foot on the pedal and keeping it there, if it slips off…… oh calamity! I’m glad the maid comes in once a day to change the bin liner.

Cyprus 2000 - Day 3

Decided to take a walk to the harbour today, it’s not too far and the weather’s brilliant. We’d already seen a sign that said “To the Harbour” the previous day so we made for that. However before we got to it we suddenly saw a sign that said “To the Beach”. “Let’s go down there,” said Pauline, “we can see the beach and if we’re down on the coast we can just follow it round to the harbour.”

It was a boiling hot day, we got to the beach, there was no shade and I was roasting.

The harbour didn’t seem to be that far away but after rounding one promontory after another and not finding it I had my doubts that there really was a harbour at all. By now, Emma and I had been walking slower and slower, getting further and further behind Pauline and still no shade. The heat was unbearable and Emma was beginning to look like a lobster. The track we were following had left the coastline and was now meandering all over the place inland but was still following the general direction of the coastline. After roughly 45 minutes we suddenly reached the harbour and staggered up to the first café we came to. Emma was feeling unwell and just said, “Dad, I’ve got to sit down.” She looked like she was about to faint. I quickly got some water for her and we both sat in a daze for about 15 minutes while we tried to recover from our dehydration and general feeling of nausea.

Pauline was fine and couldn’t see what all the fuss was about so we didn’t get much sympathy there. We had something to eat and feeling slightly better, we moved on. Shortly afterwards, Emma was sick by the roadside. Within seconds it was covered by a swarm of ants who must have thought it was their lucky day. Isn’t nature wonderful?

Next time, if I want to go to the harbour I’ll follow the sign that says “To the Harbour” and if I want to go to the beach I’ll follow a sign that says “To the Beach”. I think that’s why they put them there isn’t it? They’ll have to change that “To the Beach” sign though. It should read “To the Beach and also to the Harbour via the longest bloody route we could think of for stupid English people who think that “To the Beach” actually means “To the Harbour.”

Went out for our evening meal. Found a place that looked nice and got ourselves a table in the open air just outside the restaurant. As soon as we sat down we discovered that the table had a wobbly leg and so did Emma’s chair. I told her to just try and list over to the same side as the table but it didn’t work so we changed her chair and I got one of the waiters to put his hand under the table leg until we’d finished our meal. It was all right, he had nothing else to do. Was all this a bad omen? No, why should it be?

We ordered a bottle of wine and the waiter came back with a different one saying that they didn’t have the one we wanted but this one was more expensive and we could have it for the same price as our original choice. This looked like a good omen eh?

The waiter brought the bottle to the table and proceeded to uncork it with one of those foolproof corkscrews and promptly snapped the cork leaving half of it in the bottle. Was this a bad omen? No, why should it be?

Instead of bothering to pull out the rest of the cork with the corkscrew the waiter just poked it into the bottle of wine. Oh no, bad omen again eh? No, why should it be?

Our meal finally came up. My roast chicken was warm on the outside but bloody stone cold on the inside with luke warm chips. Oh no, bad omen…... possibly.

While we sat there waiting for the chicken to be re-heated, the owner’s three or four children were running riot, shouting, screaming, crying, running around the tables and generally being a pain in the arse. They love children in these Mediterranean countries don’t they, the bastards. Then, all of a sudden, no more than two feet away from me one of the kids stopped jumping about, stood stock still, looked me straight in the eye and puked up all over the floor. Oh no, bad omen? All right, all right yes, yes, it was a bad omen, no, it wasn’t a bad omen it was a bloody shambles and I wished I hadn’t walked into the stinking restaurant in the first place.

The kid’s parents, the owners, were far too busy serving customers to notice all this but luckily a waiter did.

And do you know what he did?

He got out a hose and started to hose the muck away. The water mixed with the sick and started to swirl across the tiled floor (thank God it was outside) and eventually formed a sort of river of chunks cutting off our table from the rest of the restaurant.

I just looked at all this and thought of my chicken somewhere between this diluted river of sick and the kitchen. What the hell would they do to my chicken if this is how they conduct their hygiene outside the kitchen?

Oh, here it comes. “Sorry about that sir, here you are, enjoy your meal,” said the waiter. He gave me my meal and splished sploshed away back to the kitchen. Enjoy your meal? What the hell is he talking about? Enjoy your meal? Here I am, sitting with my feet in the air because of the puddles of sick under my chair, drinking wine that I didn’t want, eating chicken that still isn’t hot, chips that by now are colder than the chicken was in the first place and still trying to have a good time.

And do you know what?

I still paid the bill.

Cyprus 2000 - Day 4

The place we’re staying in is called Paphos but it seems there are two spellings of it. Sometimes you see Paphos, sometimes you see Pafos. What’s all that about? All I can think is that it’s a dual language country, Greek and Cockney. I said to one bloke, “Hello old chap, have you been to Paphos before?” He said, “Nah mate. First time in bleedin’ Pafos. Good though innit?” And off he went singing, “Feed the birds-a, tuppence a bag-a.”

Garling bread and strawbezzies on the menu tonight.

And another thing. What’s wrong with these Mediterranean countries? They’re always going on about water shortages yet if you walk into any supermarket you’ll see bottles of water stacked from floor to ceiling. Water shortage? What water shortage? I think not Cypriot liars. Think again.

Cyprus 2000 - Day 5

Booked a coach trip to the Troodos mountains for tomorrow. It includes a visit to a monastery and as we booked the woman said to make sure that we either wore or took appropriate clothing. To enter the monastery bare shoulders and arms down to the elbow have to be covered as do bare legs down to knee level or just below. Decided to wear a baggy T-shirt and my long baggy khaki Eric Morecambe shorts. Can’t wait.

Cyprus 2000 - Day 6

We’re on our way to the mountains and the monastery. Pauline and Emma have brought tops and long skirts to slip on for when we get there. I was decently covered by my T-shirt and shorts. As we neared the monastery, still on the coach, our tour guide was giving us instructions on how to behave once we were off the coach. “Please make sure you have on appropriate clothing,” she said, “No shorts – trousers for men, long skirts for women.”

Hang on, what did she say? Trousers for men? That’s not what the booking agent had said was it? I checked again with the tour guide. “I was told these shorts would be OK,” I said. “No shorts, trousers for men. You must be covered to ankles,” she said, “they have guards at the monastery entrance to turn away those people improperly dressed ”

What could I do? Sneak in the back way? I stood behind the coach and decided that all I could do was pull my shorts down so that the waistband came down as far as it could without everything popping out and at the same time stretch my T-shirt down to bridge the gap. I think I was looking good. It looked like I had on an extra long pair of shorts and I was deformed but I seemed to be quite decently covered. Everything was fine until I tried to move.

Couldn’t walk you see.

With the crotch of the shorts so low down I couldn’t move my legs. The only way I could move was by doing a strange sort of jerky bunny-hop with one hand holding on to the top of my shorts and the bottom of my T-shirt to make sure that they didn’t part company. I was soon getting the hang of it by practising my bunny-hopping up and down outside the monastery entrance. I’d decided to do it there, firstly to make me feel more relaxed about it and secondly, to give the guards outside a chance to familiarise themselves with some lunatic before I bunny-hopped past them into the monastery. I think this’ll work, I thought, one more check with the tour guide and I’ll bunny-hop right on in. When the tour guide saw me she frowned and shouted hysterically, “No good. No good. Trousers needed.”

“So what the hell do I do?” I shouted back.

“You go down that road there, at bottom will be place to get trousers for monastery,” she shouted back again.

Luckily I wasn’t the only one in need of trousers so off I and a few other blokes went in search of trousers. At the end of the road was a bloke standing by the open tail-gate of his car. On top of the car balanced precariously was a cardboard sign with the handwritten words “Trousers For Monastery Visit”. I stood around with these other sad blokes while he proceeded to look each of us up and down and with his expert eye assessed our exact measurements without even using a tape measure. “Here, you look good in these,” he said to me as he threw a pair of chocolate brown, wide pinstripe trousers at me. As I struggled to put them on over my shorts it was obvious his expert eye had told him that I was a fat dwarf, inside leg 28, waist 30. The trousers had a nice flair to the leg and the style, wide brown pinstripe, would have looked a lot better if I’d had a tommy-gun under my arm. As I still struggled to get them on I realised the waist was just big enough to get my legs through and with all the will in the world would not close around my waist. The zip would only do up about an eighth of the way up while the top of the trousers was left open and flapping in the breeze. This, coupled with the fact that the trouser legs were flapping away about four inches above my bare ankles prompted me to say to the man, “How do I look?”

“OK,” he said, “one pound please.”

This was worse than bunny-hopping. The only way I could walk in them was very, very carefully in case they slowly slipped down to my ankles, but at least I could walk, the chocolate brown pinstripe contrasting nicely with my dark green T-shirt and white trainers. Think I’m looking pretty cool I thought as I flashed a bare ankle at the guards and walked into the monastery.

It wasn’t until I caught a glimpse of my reflection that I realised I looked like I was a demented old fool on day release from the local mental institution. I was even carrying a plastic carrier bag to complete the image.

Once inside, everywhere I went I kept seeing blokes walking past in funny trousers. It was like being at the circus. There was one poor tall bloke whose trousers seemed to fit perfectly apart from the legs which only reached to just below his knees. Some blokes had trousers that were too long, crumpled up all over their shoes while some were just too ridiculous for words. I spent many a happy moment waiting for them to pass by and then laughing like a drain. In fact, if we’d all stood together in one big group I’m sure we could have all swapped trousers and got a pair that fitted.

Wherever I went all I could see was blokes stopping each other and saying, “Where did you get them?”

“Bloke with the car.” 

“Oh, bloke with the car. Mmmm…..me too.”

Cyprus 2000 - Day 7

We got handed a leaflet today. It said “George’s Restaurant. Bring leaflet with you for free carafe of wine.” Among the items on the menu were “Porn Salad”, “Scrumbled Egg” and “Spaghetti Polonaise” (one of Chopin’s favourites I suppose). It also said “See restaurant for hall menu” which we realised after a while meant see restaurant for whole menu. Free carafe of wine? Can’t turn that down so we turned up with our leaflet and did indeed get a free carafe of wine and it was very drinkable surprisingly.

While we were sitting there a couple came in with two teenage children, also with their leaflet. The man handed his leaflet over with a flourish and when asked whether they preferred a red or white carafe the man said, “No thanks, we don’t drink wine.” The whole purpose of bringing the leaflet and giving it to the restaurant was to get some free wine wasn’t it? So why did he – oh never mind.

On the next table to ours sat an old colonial type, moustache, upper class accent, military bearing and with him was a Filipino girl. Emma and this man were sitting back to back and during his meal he suddenly threw a large handful of salt over his left shoulder which landed all over Emma’s head and shoulders. (Now you know where they get that dandruff shampoo brand name from). What’s going on? If you’re going to do something like that, don’t you look behind you first? What a creep. I told Emma to get up and punch him while I hid under the table but she wouldn’t.

Cyprus 2000 - Day 8

Well it’s entertainment night at the hotel and it’s “Cyprus Night”. What a surprise eh? What was it last year? Oh yes, some old poof balancing tea trays wasn’t it? In Cyprus they go one better. It’s an old poof balancing glasses on his head. Not spectacles, not those sort of glasses, come on that would be too easy, we could all do that couldn’t we? Well, after a bit of practice we could – start with a small pair of unbreakable sunglasses and gradually work up to the full size prescription spectacles, no, these are glass tumblers on the top of his head. He had an assistant, don’t they all, and after they’d done a bit of Zorba the Greek dancing I saw him creep into a corner and pour water into this tumbler. Then he placed a thick wad of paper serviettes covering the top of the glass and finally put the glass on his head. Then for no apparent reason he quickly inverted the glass so that the serviettes were now on his head with the upturned glass of water on top of them. The water didn’t seep out. Then his assistant placed a beer mat on top of the glass and placed a second glass on top of that, this time though it was an empty one. The old poof paraded around to the strains of Zorba the Greek with two glasses on his head. All this was repeated until he had a tower of six glasses balanced on his head while he moved around amongst the audience making great theatrical gestures looking smugger and smugger with every glass that was added. God, he was looking so pleased with himself. As he passed me I caught his eye and gestured towards his feet. “Your shoelace is undone,” I said in fluent Greek. Oh calamity! He looked down and crash went his act. Serve you right you arrogant little man I thought.

I know, I know, it didn’t really happen but only because I can’t speak Greek that’s all. During all the glass balancing, Pauline was asked by his assistant to go up and put a glass on his head but she went all silly and giggly saying she couldn’t do it. She’d never done it in public before you see. In private she does it all the time but there’s something not quite right about putting a glass on a strange bloke’s head in public isn’t there? The other highlight of “Cyprus Night” was the two man combo accompanying the “Look at me I can balance six glasses on my head and you can’t” man. They provided the “music to dance the night away.”

I went to bed with Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called To Say I Love You” ringing in my ears. As sung by the guitarist it went:

I just called to say I love you

I just called to say how much I care

I just called to say I love you

And I mean it from the bottom in my heart

What a song.

What a group.

THE END.