Re: What's the point anyway?
Date: March 02, 2014 10:24AM
Tin Whiskers Wrote:
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> Yes I quite agree I mean what's the point of being
> treated like sheep. What's the point of going
> abroad if you're just another tourist carted
> around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs
> from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps
> and their cardigans and their transistor radios
> and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the
> tea - "Oh they don't make it properly here, do
> they, not like at home" - and stopping at Majorcan
> bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red
> Barrel and calamari's and two veg and sitting in
> their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White's sun
> cream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent
> flesh 'cos they "overdid it on the first day." And
> being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and
> Bellvueses and Continentales with their modern
> international luxury roomettes and draught Red
> Barrel and swimming pools full of fat German
> businessmen pretending they're acrobats forming
> pyramids and frightening the children and barging
> into queues and if you're not at your table spot
> on seven you miss the bowl of Campbell's Cream of
> Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of
> International Cuisine, and every Thursday night
> the hotel has a bloody cabaret in the bar,
> featuring a tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch
> hips and some bloated fat tart with her hair
> brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting
> Flamenco for Foreigners. And then some adenoidal
> typists from Birmingham with flabby white legs and
> diarrhea trying to pick up hairy bandy-legged wop
> waiters called Manuel and once a week there's an
> excursion to the local Roman Remains to buy
> cherryade and melted ice cream and bleeding
> Watney's Red Barrel and one evening you visit the
> so called typical restaurant with local color and
> atmosphere and you sit next to a party from Rhyl
> who keep singing "Torremolinos, torremolinos" and
> complaining about the food - "It's so greasy isn't
> it?" - and you get cornered by some drunken
> greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic camera
> and Dr. Scholl sandals and last Tuesday's Daily
> Express and he drones on and on about how Mr.
> Smith should be running this country and how many
> languages Enoch Powell can speak and then he
> throws up over the Cuba Libres. And sending tinted
> postcards of places they don't realize they
> haven't even visited to "All at number 22, weather
> wonderful, our room is marked with an 'X'. Food
> very greasy but we've found a charming little
> local place hidden away in the back streets where
> they serve Watney's Red Barrel and cheese and
> onion crisps and the accordionist plays 'Maybe
> it's because I'm a Londoner'." And spending four
> days on the tarmac at Luton airport on a five-day
> package tour with nothing to eat but dried
> BEA-type sandwiches and you can't even get a drink
> of Watney's Red Barrel because you're still in
> England and the bloody bar closes every time
> you're thirsty and there's nowhere to sleep and
> the kids are crying and vomiting and breaking the
> plastic ash-trays and they keep telling you it'll
> only be another hour although your plane is still
> in Iceland and has to take some Swedes to
> Yugoslavia before it can load you up at 3 a.m. in
> the bloody morning and you sit on the tarmac till
> six because of "unforeseen difficulties", i.e. the
> permanent strike of Air Traffic Control in Paris -
> and nobody can go to the lavatory until you take
> off at 8, and when you get to Malaga airport
> everybody's swallowing "enterovioform" and queuing
> for the toilets and queuing for the armed customs
> officers, and queuing for the bloody bus that
> isn't there to take you to the hotel that hasn't
> yet been finished. And when you finally get to the
> half-built Algerian ruin called the Hotel del Sol
> by paying half your holiday money to a licensed
> bandit in a taxi you find there's no water in the
> pool, there's no water in the taps, there's no
> water in the bog and there's only a bleeding
> lizard in the bidet. And half the rooms are double
> booked and you can't sleep anyway because of the
> permanent twenty-four-hour drilling of the
> foundations of the hotel next door - and you're
> plagued by appalling apprentice chemists from
> Ealing pretending to be hippies, and middle-class
> stockbrokers' wives busily buying identical
> holiday villas in suburban development plots just
> like Esher, in case the Labour government gets in
> again, and fat American matrons with
> sloppy-buttocks and Hawaiian-patterned ski pants
> looking for any mulatto male who can keep it up
> long enough when they finally let it all flop out.
> And the Spanish Tourist Board promises you that
> the raging cholera epidemic is merely a case of
> mild Spanish tummy, like the previous outbreak of
> Spanish tummy in 1660 which killed half London and
> decimated Europe - and meanwhile the bloody
> Guardia are busy arresting sixteen-year-olds for
> kissing in the streets and shooting anyone under
> nineteen who doesn't like Franco. And then on the
> last day in the airport lounge everyone's
> comparing sunburns, drinking Nasty Spumante,
> buying cartons of duty free "cigarillos" and using
> up their last pesetas on horrid dolls in Spanish
> National costume and awful straw donkeys and
> bullfight posters with your name on "Ordoney, El
> Cordobes and Brian Pules of Norwich" and 3-D
> pictures of the Pope and Kennedy and Franco, and
> everybody's talking about coming again next year
> and you swear you never will although there you
> are tumbling bleary-eyed out of a tourist-tight
> antique Iberian airplane...
That's stupid.