Oh, and there’s the bog standard ‘Most resorts featured in this brochure are within a mere stone’s throw of stunning, sandy beaches’.
Which, you can be damned sure, means, ‘Yours isn’t.’
Half our apartment block is covered in scaffolding and the view from our balcony is of a pile of rubble.
Let’s face it. It’s hardly an oasis. And it’s about as exotic as Solihull.
Something tells me this holiday may well contain strong language from the outset. Mind you, at least George has paid for everything. So I shouldn’t really give a fanny fart where we are.
Yep. Sod it. It’s going to be absolutely boiling hot.
Which is enough for me.
Obviously, a ginger minger like me shouldn’t really do sun-bathing. It’s just not nice, is it? But I do love the whole business of being able to lie out in it for five minutes and then sigh, ‘Oh, it’s too hot out here. I’ll just have to have a quick dip in the pool then it’s off to the shade for me for chips and lager.’
After all, that’s what holidays are all about.
I’ll feel a lot better when we’ve targeted some nice little place to have dinner.
But it’s difficult to remain optimistic when the smell of drains is so overpowering we have to keep all the windows firmly closed. And when it comes to bagsying the bedrooms, I’m mortified when I realise I’m going to have to share with Sam. How am I going to stop myself from craning to catch a glimpse of his willy every time he comes out of the shower?
Bugger Janice. She’s insisted she has the single room. Apparently she’s not sleeping too well. The thought that she’ll soon look like Mr Greedy is bothering her at night. And she doesn’t want to keep anyone else awake. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her sleep pattern. She just doesn’t want to share.
After we’ve freshened up, we congregate on our balcony/windowsill to quaff the champagne George bought at the airport. And, as we get giggly on bubbles, we declare the atmosphere to be distinctly more Suburban Starter Home than Spanish Villa. And Sam is only half joking when he bets me five thousand pesetas that the sound of cicadas we can hear is tape-recorded and played on a loop through speakers hidden along the pathway outside.
Our welcome meeting does very little to raise our hopes further. Dee (the orange-calved rep) welcomes us once again to our Top Wank holiday with a plastic cupful of watered down Sangria and shakes us all by the hand.
Is it my imagination, or does she look as though she’s offering us her condolences?
She goes on to advise us not to drink the water, because, although it isn’t harmful, it is full of minerals and tastes of rotten eggs. She also warns us that some of the beaches dotted around are full of naturalists, although I think she means naturists. And then she explains that the reason the resort is almost completely greenery-free and therefore looks as barren as Elizabeth I is that the Canary Islands only get six inches of rain a year. Luckily for us, most of this is forecast for the next few days.
As this news sinks in, she then cheerfully informs us that, as this particular resort is miles from anywhere and there’s very little to do here, especially when it rains, it would make a lot of sense to pay a small fortune for the privilege of joining groups of noisy families in loud beachwear on some of the organised trips to places of not so local interest.
‘Any questions?’ she asks finally.
‘Yes,’ bellows George. ‘Would you think it rude of me if I asked you to stop talking now?’
‘Is this a joke?’ someone else asks hopefully.
‘Do we get complimentary Prozac?’ Janice asks.
‘Would you consider changing the description of this holiday in your brochure?’ asks George.
‘To what?’ Dee is confused.
‘A Helliday.’
As it turns out, this is no joke. We’re not the unwitting victims of Candid Camera or Beadle’s About or any other light entertainment show for that matter. And, as we toddle off to explore our surroundings, we soon realise that ‘hell’ is a pretty good description of our position. The resort is a pleasure-free zone. Slap bang outside our complex there’s a building site the size of a small country. And we don’t have hard hats. I jump as a crane with a rusty bath attached to it swings high above our heads. Janice bursts into tears as her Jimmy Choo scuffs against the head of an abandoned doll, its eyes rolled back into its hairless head and its knickerless, genital-free bum twisted at an awkward angle to the rest of its body.
‘Sorry,’ she squeaks. ‘It’s the hormones.’
‘It’s OK.’ We all rush to comfort her.