Comic poet David Williams has just released an hilarious new book of verse sharing his most Ghastly Holidays. Writing exclusively for Female First, he reveals just a few of the incidents that have befallen him, and his family, during their sojourns over the years.
Ghastly Holidays
OMG! where to start? Have you had flashbacks already?
We all long for our hols. The efforts we make to get away are exceptional; for example, those of us about to do battle with metal and melting tarmac on the seven-hour sojourn to Cornwall. God speed! (although the latter doesn’t come into it)
I am no different in that respect, ready to jet off to any country that A, serves rosé and B, will have me. I am also like anyone else in that I have had my fair share of holiday-related issues, for however well-prepared the ointment, there’s always a fly hovering and ready to dive right in.
Yet you can’t allow yourself to take these things too seriously, at least not in hindsight. Humour is both our greatest export and most effective antidote for SNAFUs. Inject a little comedy into those memories of minor mishaps and you get a great anecdote for the next seaside bar you arrive at. It was from that unshakeable belief that my new collection of comic poetry, Ghastly Holidays: Things my father never told me…, was born. Each of the poems and short stories were first penned while holidaying with my family, and each comes from hard-earned experience. Yes, an artist really does suffer for their art.
Problems can arise at any point of a holiday, of course, and that includes the picking up and dropping off parts. Many of us will be conducting “no drones please” rain dances at Gatwick, straightening out our backs with a couple of good nights’ kip on the T5 concrete or gently swaying blankly, looking at the terribly nice new digitised screen in the Cathedral of CANCELLATION otherwise known as Euston. I capture this delightful scene in the following poem from my new book...
The Return Home
If you want to screw up a great holiday, just try returning to one of
London’s airports.
No we are not expecting all the flags out,
Red carpet treatment and free cigarette handouts,
Just a relaxed return, with a short meander,
Through passport control and into Alan’s Panda.
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For London Stansted, (Standstill is a better name),
Everyone says why drive there, let the train take the strain,
But good folk it’s a hell of a palaver
Taking trollies trains and taxis, as frankly we rather,
Submit to the turmoil of the M25,
Of course it is easier to drive…
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Parking in the midst of roadworks trying to remember space, 12 row Z, zone B,
It’s worse than The Times crossword trying to retrieve the family.
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For screwing up a perfectly good holiday retreat,
Then Gatwick is hard to beat,
It’s not the atmosphere, the queues or the broken trolly,
Or the misery of the return with almost zero lolly,
It’s your daughter’s look of abject horror,
As the remains of her suitcase unravel on the conveyor.
-
Just because it’s the smallest bag in Gatwick,
Covered in flowers and pink lipstick,
There was just no need to depth charge our daughter’s emotions,
By undertaking quite so many controlled explosions,
Perhaps it was the collected seaside rubble,
That had identified this tiny suitcase for trouble.
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And last but by no means least,
Without any conceivable thought to please,
Comes the very lowest of the low,
That unloved catacomb of the people that is Heathrow.
-
So T5 is the new place to be,
No one has thought about terminals one two or three,
The walls are peeling,
The laggings out the ceiling,
If these are cathedrals for travel,
Then stay at home and play some scrabble.
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Our addiction to holiday is driven by tradition and an anxious hope of fulfilment. We want to please our kids, lovers, ‘rellies’, and even ourselves with some time out. After all, we’ve earned it! So what about our experiences if we ever get there? Is it the worst ones we remember more? Perhaps. About 10 years ago, I bought one of those ancient things called a camera, with many buttons and bits, and after being deftly demonstrated by the sales staff it seemed impossible for us not to screw it up when we were clicking silently away deep in the African bush.
Yes, the whole family could use it—even Daddy. The radial resonance of many beautiful birds and beasts accumulated on screen, including a miraculous movie of a tiny bird, the Penduline tit, nonchalantly picking a mite out of a rhino’s ear while in flight. Truly amazing in slo-mo.
All good, until Daddy decided to edit the pics bumping around the back of a Land Rover on the last night of the holiday.
“Do you really want to delete this picture?” the new magic camera suggested, helpfully.
“Yes”, I replied. “Because that’s why I pressed the bloody button, ‘delete!’”
And bingo, just like that, the whole holiday disappeared. It’s as if we’d never been away and in my case it would have been best if I hadn’t- EVER.
Continuing on an African theme, our youngest, Tom, then aged four, was invited with Mummy to have a look at the grumpy old buffalo fast asleep after a huge herbaceous feast, 100 yards out from the vehicle. Well, they didn’t sleep for long.
Tom cried loudly about buffalo ‘cwap’ being stuck to his shoe and immediately the buffalo, this dagha of discarded old boys, swung into action and charged straight for them.
“ You’ll have your own cwap on there if you don’t start running! “ shouted Mummy. They only just made it back to safety. Yes, that’s a holiday experience stampeded in my family’s memories forever.
After a day full of beach and burns, rum and rosé, doom bar and rubber, you finally get the kids to bed and now then, a quiet glass of vino, some soft throbbing reggae. Aah, you can kick back, slow dance a little, show some backup and get down to some real quality time with your partner. Or can you? What the hell have they got there? What’s that - a cigar? (If that isn’t a perfect segue to another of my poems within Ghastly Holidays then I don’t know what is)
CIGAR
What often makes a wife shout out,
Is her husband’s ability to flout,
Indeed show a total disregard,
For Doctor’s orders about cigars.
-
You have to be an exceptional earner,
To acquire these devastating burners,
Firing one up takes several goes,
Before one can chomp through a Monte Christo.
-
So why do wives get in a huff,
Just because of a measly husbands puff?
Surely just a small amount of ash,
Cannot prevent the bedroom dash.
-
I’m told dear reader that it is the stench,
That prevents consummation with the wench,
And what knocks off all the bails,
Is when your husband exhales!
-
For a festival of smells escape the lips,
And rather deflates the bits between the hips,
As wafts of stale burnt tobacco,
Disrupt any thought of fellatio.
-
So what started as thoughts sublime,
With even the fleeting glimpse of a sixty nine,
Leads to disgruntled shaking of the heads,
And invariable dispassionate separate beds.
MORAL Don't smoke
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Happy holidays, dear readers. I hope you have enjoyed my brief recollections of bad holiday experiences, and agree with me that the best balm for those nasty reality bites we all get while on our travels is simply a good dose of jocularity.
Do feel free to drop me a line via my website and send me your own best and worst please. After all, you don’t have to be playing around in the bush all by yourself.
Ghastly Holidays: Things my father never told me… by David Williams is out now via Oort Publications and Amazon UK, priced £9.99 as a paperback and £4.99 as an eBook. Further information about David Williams can be found on his website, www.oortpublications.co.uk