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 calamaris and two veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting
Timothy White's suncream 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 Bontinentales 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 diarrhoea trying to pick up hairy bandy-legged wop
waiters called Manuel and once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman
Ruins 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 colour
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
here, 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 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
realise 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'.
