:56:01
from Luton with an Instamatic camera and
last Tuesday's Daily Express...
:56:05
Please be quiet! This is the last time...
:56:06
...and he drones on and on and on about how
Ian Smith should be running the country
:56:09
and how many languages Margaret Powell can speak
and then she throws up all over the cuba libres.
:56:14
And spending four days on the
tarmac at Luton Airport
:56:16
on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat
but dry British Airways-type sandwiches.
:56:19
Shut up! Please shut up!
:56:21
And you can't even get a glass of Watney's
Red Barrel because you're still in England
:56:25
and the bloody bar closes every
time you're thirsty.
:56:26
And the kids are crying and vomiting
and breaking the plastic ashtrays.
:56:29
They keep telling you it'll only be another hour,
but you know damn well your plane is still in Iceland,
:56:34
and has to come back and take a party of...
Shut up!...take a party of Swedes to Yugoslavia,
:56:38
before it can load you up at 3 a.m.
in the morning. And then you
:56:41
sit on the tarmac for four hours
because of unforeseen difficulties,
:56:45
i.e. the permanent strike of air
traffic control over Paris.
:56:48
When you finally get to Malaga airport,
everybody's queueing for the bloody toilet,
:56:51
and queueing for the bloody armed customs
officers, and queueing for
:56:54
the bloody bus that isn't there, waiting to take
you to the hotel that hasn't yet been built.
:56:58
When you finally get to the half-built
Algerian ruin called the Hotel del Sol,
:57:02
by paying half your holiday money
to a licensed bandit in a taxi,
:57:06
there's no water in the pool, there's no water
in the bog, there's no water in the tap,
:57:10
there's only a bleeding lizard in the bidet,
and half the rooms are double-booked,
:57:15
and you can't sleep anyway, 'cause of the
permanent twenty-four hour drilling
:57:18
of the foundations of the hotel next door.
:57:19
Meanwhile, the Spanish National Tourist Board
promises you the raging cholera epidemic
:57:24
is merely a mild outbreak of Spanish Tummy,
rather like the previous outbreak in 1616
:57:29
even the bloody rats are dying from it!
:57:33
As early as the late 14th century, or indeed
as late as the early 14th century,
:57:41
the earliest forms of japes were divisible in...
:57:43
Meanwhile, the bloody Guardia are busy
arresting 16-year-olds for kissing in the streets.
:57:47
And finally on the last day
in the airport lounge,
:57:50
everybody's buying little awful horrid
donkeys with their names on,
:57:53
and bullfight posters with their own
names on, like Antonio ----,
:57:57
Mr Brian Pules of Norwich.
And then finally when you get to bloody Luton,