My Holiday Romance

Day 1. Malaga

I had to wait until we landed at Malaga before I could get an idea of the potential. There are so many different tour parties on an Easy Jet Charter flight that you have no idea who will be in your party until you get on the coach to the hotel.

            I was first on the coach and got a seat near the back so that I could clock everyone getting on and identify likely prospects. There was the usual mix of middle-aged and elderly couples, but I thought that there were at least three lone females who might be looking for action. The problem is that lone females usually cluster together for safety and it’s difficult to prise them apart once they’ve bonded.

            I cruised the hotel pool and the bars after dinner. As I’d anticipated, the three singles had teamed up and a fourth, a pale undernourished forty-something, was in the company of a bad-tempered elderly couple, the frustrated spinster daughter, thirsting for romance and excitement in foreign parts. Spinster daughters are always a good bet for the practising lounge-lizard, not usually over blessed with beauty, but at that stage in life where natural inhibitions are in daily conflict with increasing sexual desperation. I sat near her in the bar, smiled wanly, nodded respectfully, and raised my glass. She made meaningful eye-contact, but Mother frowned and tutted and Daddy glared with intent, so I left it there and went to bed.

Day 2. Ronda

            The three lone females were now joined at the hip and I realised that ingratiating myself would be difficult. The eldest, fiftyish, looked very much lived-in and was doggy even by my standards, but might do as a last resort. The younger women, although not spring chickens, would pass as half-decent in a poor light and the blonde one had decent legs, so I decided to try and cut her out from the flock.

            I tagged along with the guided tour of the bullring, lurking near the trio and injecting witty if uninvited comments in to their conversation; comments which they surprisingly, and I thought rudely, ignored. My big chance came after the tour when the one with the legs decided she wanted to visit a particular shop and arranged to rejoin the others later, at a Tapas bar.

            I skulked inconspicuously for a while, giving Legs a start, then followed her, staying out of sight until she entered a shop. Spying my chance I followed her in, expressed joyful surprise at meeting her, and hadn’t the Bullring tour been interesting? She smiled nervously and muttered a reply that I couldn’t quite understand, so I loitered while she made her purchases, then followed her out of the shop. I laughingly suggested that we take lunch together, somewhere quiet, where we could perhaps discuss how we would spend the rest of the holiday. She stopped, turned to me with a radiant smile and said that she would rather amputate her left foot with a rusty bread saw than be seen dead in my company, and why was there always a creep like me on every tour she went on?

            I interpreted her reaction as a ‘no’, apologised for the temerity of my suggestion and for failing to recognise her true sexual orientation, and wished her joy and fulfilment with her new lesbian friends.

Day 3. Seville

            I have conceded that my failure with Miss Legs has adversely affected my chances with her associates. Consequently, I turned my attentions towards the desperate spinster, corralling her  in an alcove near the ladies toilets in the hotel bar, and whispering lewd nothings in her welcoming ear until violently interrupted by her parasol-wielding mother. This good lady informed me, between blows, that her naive, immature, and vulnerable daughter was plagued by men of my ilk, and that her husband, a retired police superintendent and judo black belt, was watching me closely.

Day 4.  Seville

A free day, intended for sight-seeing, but which I utilised to treat the worst of my parasol bruising in the privacy of my own room.

After dinner I chatted with Mr and Mrs Felix in a discrete corner of the hotel bar.

Days 5 and 6. Cordoba and Granada

            Mr and Mrs Felix are accompanied by her sister Delores, a loud, large lady of uncertain vintage, whose true identity is disguised under many layers of trowelled-on make-up. She is not a pretty sight.

            But she likes me, and she is very rich.

            I’ve always been a pragmatist

            

On Stanford Bank

Photo courtesy George Barker

     If you leave the village of Stanford-on-Teme by the Bromyard road you will pass, high on your left, the Gothic style Georgian church of St. Mary, and the seat in its churchyard dedicated to the memory of Jack Clements., long time President of the Beacon Roads Cycling Club.

      Jack was Irish gentry, Master Jack to the folks back home, but a respected member and hard-working official of the Midlands cycling fraternity and ‘one of the lads’ out on the bike, and the seat overlooks the Teme valley, and the long, steep climb up Stanford Bank, reflecting Jack’s twin loves of fishing and cycling.

   Stanford Bank has been, for nearly 70 years, one of the most feared climbs on the Beacon RCC Mountain Time Trial, regarded as a classic in the cycling world, and still attracts entries from some of Britain's top time-trialing talent. In his younger days, Jack competed, but in later years be found at the top of the climb, watch in hand, recording the painful efforts of those in search of glory. Sometimes, he recorded mine.

           I’ve been up Stanford several times in anger in the Mountain Trial, always experiencing the same grim enjoyment that I presume one gets from self flagellation. One of the worst aspects of the climb is that you can see a long way up it, and from the Church it appears to be about as vertical as it can get without you toppling over backwards, so you drop down a couple of gears, whimper pitifully, and mouth vile obscenities to cheer yourself up until you reach the top. One year the pain was worth it, because Pete McHugh and Jimmy Arnold and I won the Handicap team award, along with bragging rights for several years. Jimmy’s long dead now, and Pete has joined UKIP which I suppose is much the same thing.

            Stanford, though is not just a pain-in-the-arse in time trials but often features in road races, and my most enduring memory concerns an eighty-mile road race more than fifty years ago.

            The course included two ascents of Stanford Bank and two of Ankerdine, and on the first ascent of Stanford the bunch split in two immediately the climb started, and I found myself in the wrong half,watching the leaders ride away. At the top, the stragglers regrouped, probably twenty or more of us, and I was surprised to find Johnny Pottier among them. John was an ex-pro of some reput and had been the travelling reserve with the British Tour-de-France team in 1955, the year that Brian Robinson became the first Brit to finish that race.

            We started to organise a chase and worked well together over Bromyard Downs and down to Knightwick where we started the first climb of Ankerdine. Mayhem ensued, and at the top there were only about a dozen riders left. The hard grind back to Gt. Whitely reduced it even more and by the time we started the second climb of Stanford Bank,  Johnny and I had blown everyone else away, and oh joy, the race leaders were now in sight, not far up the road. I upped my place slightly, to close the leaders down but Johnny came past me out of the saddle and sprinting hard. By the time I reacted, he’d bridged the gap and joined the leaders, leaving me wallowing despairingly down the road. The group was out of sight before I’d reached the top and I didn’t see them again that day.

            I have borne Pottier a grudge over that callous act for over fifty years now, and whenever I see him now I make a point of mentioning it and ask him if he is ready to apologise.

            Johnny always grins, and said he cant remember it, but he bloody well does.

            You bastard, Pottier.

The Spirits in the Flames

Mummy and Daddy took me and Jason to the bonfire on Saturday. Daddy said that it was safer than having our own fireworks, but that afterwards we could stay up late and have hot-dogs, and a special bedtime story.

            The bonfire was lovely, all red and golden flames that kept spitting and changing shape. Some flames jumped from the fire and threw off crackling sparks that vanished in to clouds of swirling white smoke. And I could see fiery caves inside the fire, grottoes filled with wispy shapes that I imagined were elves and fairies.

            Suddenly, a big red star exploded overhead, spreading more coloured stars in to the sky. Then there were some little bangs and more stars flew up in huge circles that floated apart and then faded away, The stars kept flying up and then I heard loud bangs, like thunderclaps, and saw shooting stars flying in all directions. Then, after a long while, the stars disappeared and it went quiet, and all that I could see were the stars in the sky and the embers of the fire.

            “That was lovely,” said Mummy, “now let’s go home for our hot-dogs.”

           

            We had barbecue sauce with the hot-dogs, and ice cream, and when we’d washed and cleaned our teeth, we got in to bed and Daddy told us a story

            “Long ago, when the world was new, there was no moon or stars so the nights were completely black.  People couldn’t see and kept bumping in to things, talking to complete strangers by accident and tripping over cats. So they went to the Wise Men for help."

            "The Wise Men nodded and said, 'Light at night? Interesting concept, we’ll come back to you on that.' But they didn’t come back, because that didn’t have an ‘O’level in light creation between them."

            "Then someone said, 'How about Mr Zang, he knows everything?' and everyone went 'Ewwwwww!' because Mr Zang was very smelly and had been sent to live by himself in the woods. But they went, and Mr Zang said, 'You lot must want something real bad if you’ve come to see me. Light at night? Not a problem,' and he picked up his backpack and led everyone back to the village."

           " Mr Zang made everyone collect lots of wood, and they built a bonfire in a clearing. At sundown, they formed a circle around the bonfire and Mr Zang lit a brushwood torch, shouted 'Abracadoppoluss, Abracadoppolus,' very loudly and set the bonfire alight, and smelly black smoke started billowing out. Mr Zang said the black smoke was evil spirits who were being chased away by the good spirits in the fire, Mr Zang then took out lots of brightly coloured packets from his backpack. The packets were filled with different coloured dusts that he threw on to the flames, and masses of crackling sparks shot in to the air. The sparks flew higher and higher and everyone went 'Ohhhhhhhh' and 'Ahhhhhhh', because they looked so beautiful. Then the sparks faded away and everyone stared in amazement because the sky was now full of twinkling lights which were casting a strange and beautiful light over the earth."

            “'Those lights are called stars' said Mr Zang, 'not good enough to read by, but you can see to avoid tripping over the cat.  I’d do you a moon, but I’m not due moon dust till Tuesday.'

            "Mr Zang said that the stars were good spirits who had chased the evil spirits from the fire, and gone to live in the sky so that they could watch over the earth at night and keep little children safe."

            “'More than you deserve,' said Mr Zang, who was as grumpy as he was smelly, “Try not to bother me again please. Goodbye,' and he went back to the forest to be smelly by himself."

            “'Did Mr Zang make the moon?" asked Jason.

            “Yes,” said Daddy, “but that’s another story.”