Scyooze me, but the following might start off like an advertisement.
This week, Easyjet launched a load of deals to beat the debt. Month-long stays at certain top hotels – like Egypt’s five-star Stella Gardens Resort in Hurghada (far’s ‘at?) – costing £650, estimated to be around £200 less than we’d be paying if we stayed at home, shelling oot for rocketing energy, rent or mortgage and food bills. Wowser.
As a biddy who aye gets the blues near the end of a fortnight’s holiday, a four-week stay seems like bliss. The joy of so long with nothing to do but swim and sunbathe by day, schmooze the bars and restaurants by night. Who knows, there might even be an al’ mannie aboot the place who… don’t go there, Mo!
I know a pucklie o’ my pals who’d loup at the chance of joining me. But could I actually thole a’ that luxury for so long? Chunces are I’d overdo the sun-worshipping so much my bits would end up like the crispy chicken skin on the buffets. I’d slather on the pounds at the nightly feasts, between regular bouts of what’s known amid the pyramids as Gyppy Grippy.
But, most of all, I’d miss my family. For example, would I rather have been plottin’ on a Med sunbed, and breakin’ oot in my habitual holiday prickly heat last Friday than in rain-drenched Aberdeen?
Cost-free happiness
A hugely competitive and hilarious 10-pin bowling game at Codona’s ensued, where one peer player kept having to disappear because of a sudden onslaught of mysterious beach belly, while I damnt near tiddled masellie, so intent on scoring a strike, when I accidentally humphed up the heaviest ball and near dislocated my shoulder.
As the unfortunate skitterer shot home under, almost literally, his own steam, my quine zoomed into the beach shops’ car park for something she needed, louping oot with her daughter into the still lashing rain. I happily chatted to my eight-year-old grandson behind me in the car.
Because of my permanently stiff neck, I canna turn ma heidie roon mair than a thochtie in either direction. I gabbled on about the Dons and the World Cup cards he’s collecting. The little sod answered not at all.
I twisted my arm roon the back of my chair to catch his leggie and skirl: “Gotcha.” Still silence.
That’s when I went into Nana-nae-happy mode: “Get that lolly out of your mouth and speak to me!” Just as my quine and her daughter thumped back into the car, closely followed by… the wee loon.
Gype that I am, during all my animated chat, he hadna been there ata’, having zoomed ootski the moment the car stopped. So, that was all of us in floods of laughter again. You could have seen the car rock. Now, that really is cost-free happiness.
Moreen Simpson is a former assistant editor of the Evening Express and The Press & Journal, and started her journalism career in 1970
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