My little mongrel camera was not able to do justice to any of the sighing sights on our recent trip to Maui. As the sun sank, the sky changed color moment to moment. You don't have to wait for beautiful things here. Probably this is our last trip to a place we've visited five times. "Why?" someone asked me, puzzlement wrinkling his brow. Obviously this guy has money, and we don't. If you've got it, you can't imagine not having it. Nobody thinks about that. We're not exactly in the poorhouse, but we do write down all our expenses to the nearest dollar. So this was an especial treat. It's my favorite place, and it embraces you and amuses you, and the breezes are fragrant and the birds are lavish in their song. You don't have to actually DO anything in Hawaii. We drank guava juice and made toast out of that round, sweet Hawaiian bread we remembered from past trips. Even turning on the TV was a treat (and I'll be posting some samples of that, too - we love local TV and watch it wherever we go - which isn't far, let me tell you!). Probably the highlight was the gecko encounter, but now I'm starting to think he was too big for a gecko (he must have been over a foot long, including that incredible whip of a tail). Might have been an anole, though his face had an appealing Geico look.
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'.
