The Twelve Steps: is there another way?

THE TWELVE STEPS

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol… that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure then or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we under-stood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

THE HUMANIST ALTERNATIVE

1. We accept the fact that all our efforts to stop drinking have failed.

2. We believe that we must turn elsewhere for help.

3. We turn to our fellow men and women, particularly those who have struggled with the same problem.

4. We have made a list of the situations in which we are most likely to drink.

5. We ask our friends to help us avoid these situations.

6. We are ready to accept the help they give us.

7. We earnestly hope that they will help.

8. We have made a list of the persons we have harmed and to whom we hope to make amends.

9. We shall do all we can to make amends, in any way that will not cause further harm.

10. We will continue to make such lists and revise them as needed.

11. We appreciate what our friends have done and are doing to help us.

12. We, in turn, are ready to help others who may come to us in the same way.

Only a few years ago, on my first blog on OpenSalon, I posted a piece called Why I Quit AA. Within a few hours, I was astonished to receive a torrent of something like 150 abusive, contemptuous, mocking comments from hard-core AA members who obviously felt threatened by what I was saying. One person said I must have been going to meetings in a mental institution (the ultimate insult, writing off those with mental illness as if they did not count as human). Only a small handful of comments, largely shouted down by ever-more-aggressive responses, supported anything I was saying. 

I did not trash AA, gave it credit for helping me make changes in my life, and (I believe) was quite respectful in my approach. The hate-storm it provoked made me wonder why AA saw itself as so benevolent. Where was the live-and-let-live attitude it supposedly embodied? Weren't these people actually proving some of the points I was making about AA fundamentalism and rigid insistence on adhering to the letter of the law? What the hell was going on here?

Now this message is seemingly everywhere, or all over the internet at least, and I don't see anyone getting clobbered to nearly that degree. But it makes me wonder if all those abusive people really believed they were practicing one of the most important traditions of AA, which states that it must never involve itself in any controversy. These people were only too quick to jump in, as if they had tasted blood in the water. Such heresy must be quickly clapped down, attacked to such a degree that the heretic would be silenced.

If all this was designed to turn my negative attitude towards AA around, it didn't exactly achieve that. Arm-wrestling to change someone's opinion never does. Once I got over being devastated, I felt vindicated. These people were obviously not perceptive enough to know that they were handing me a gift: written, even published proof that my observations about AA's insularity and rigidity were largely correct.

The steps have been rewritten lots of times, and this is another attempt, which, by the way, I did not write. I do not expect a torrent of abuse from this, largely because the tide is turning, not "against" AA but against seeing it as the only choice for people who are suffering from the devastating effects of alcoholism.

What is my attitude now? I can sum it up in three little words.

Do what works.

KICKER/afterthoughts. That reference to OpenSalon brought back another unpleasant memory: the way I was basically railroaded out of the blog network by people's snobbery and exclusivity. I had the effrontery to write about Sylvia Plath and used a photo of her that I had seen everywhere. One of my OpenSalon critics told me I should have contacted Plath's estate to get formal permission to use the photo with my story. I countered that with "I had the impression it was in the public domain." Her response: "I'm speechless." 

Meantime one of her cohorts had chimed in and was discussing my stupidity, their comments going back and forth in my full view. Obviously they wanted me to hear this. Most of it was in extremely rarefied, even codified literary jargon about Plath and her genre, designed to make anyone who read it feel like an ignorant worm. But most of it was just oh, so delicately-phrased mudslinging. They weren't even criticizing me directly; it was "and another thing she's doing" and "I'm not surprised at the way she" and "why do people like her have the idiocy to", until I couldn't stand it any more.

In this age of Pinterest, no one gets credit for anything, be it photo or anything else. It's all up for grabs. You can "pin" it and no one says boo, because they can't complain any more. It won't get them anywhere. This worked in my favour only once, when someone posted a link to my piece I See Dead People: Victorian Post-Mortem Photography, which has so far had something like 120,000 views.

I'm not saying swapping things around is "good", but I am saying that on the internet, it's the standard now. But I was crucified for it in the most public way. Soon I left OpenSalon and started my own blog, hoping I wouldn't be run out of Dodge in a similar fashion. So far I haven't been. But if that ever happens again, all those comments will be immediately deleted.

Be warned.

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Men have been shot for less than that!

Uninspired, and feeling more than a little sick, I've dredged up some good vintage ads from the million-and-one sites that post them. Years ago I remembered a lot of those bizarre old comic book ads, but when I talked about them people looked at me like I was crazy. Turns out I was right (you bastards!) This one needs no comment.

This one is, somehow, related. It's an old one, but no stranger than the foot-pumped vibrators doctors used to induce "paroxysm" (orgasm) in "hysterical" women. Before that, they used their fingers. Reminds me a bit of Marvel the Mustang.

I plan to get one of these.

See, I told you the moon landing never happened!

How ARE they, anyway?

Some say this one is a hoax, but I wonder. It might make a hit way down south, where Mountain Dew is the drug of choice for the under-six set.

Handy for those suicidal impulses.

I remember these ads for Midol, used for "periodic pain" which I never quite understood. Did this relate to the periodic table of elements? I am posting two of these because the hair styles are just too gorgeous to omit. The backcombing is pure art.

Self-explanatory.

Ummm. . . 

Just what is the groom going to DO with this?

TOM: Skip the wise-cracks, funny man! I like these "Stretchy-Seat" Munsingwear SKIT-Shorts . . . brief, airy, plus a little support. They stretch up and down. And how come you're so modest. . . you with a pair of nothing-muches right out of the little boys' department?

AL: I resent those words. . . speaking for Munsingwear, and myself, too. These SKIT-Trunks give me everything you've got, including that Munsingwear masterpiece, the exclusive "Stretchy-Seat". . . plus the extra leg-inches that I like.

TOM: Well, I'll ride right over you with this. It's Munsingwear's SKIT-Shirt, and a better shirt was never made. Fits like my skin, and gives with every move, with bottom shaped to avoid bulk.

AL: Mine's the same, too. It's a Munsingwear SKIT-Winger with crew neck. Wear it solo for sport, inside for business. Protects underarm of outer shirt, a go-getter for blotting up perspiration.

"It's the Stretchy-Seat!"

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

A flood of memories

A double rainbow

There is some sort of commercial running now - for the lottery, maybe? - that has a guy exclaiming over a double rainbow. I kept thinking: where have I seen this before? Here. The original goes on for about 8 minutes, and the guy laughs, weeps and appears to reach orgasm. I will spare you that version. I can't find the ad anywhere, but this was posted 6 years ago and there have been lots of parodies.

Is there anything worse than haggis? I'll tell you.

4

Vegetarian Haggis



20 reviews

Made 23 times

Recipe by:NORTHERNLIGHT1

"'Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!' 

Here's a tasty vegetarian version of The Robbie Burns Night sausage,
passed on to me by some friends from Cape Breton."

1 h 20 m 10 servings 163 cals

Ingredients

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 small carrot, finely chopped
5 fresh mushrooms, finely chopped
1 cup vegetable broth
1/3 cup dry red lentils
2 tablespoons canned kidney beans - drained, rinsed, and mashed
3 tablespoons ground peanuts
2 tablespoons ground hazelnuts
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
1 pinch ground cayenne pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons mixed spice
1 egg, beaten
1 1/3 cups steel cut oats
Add all ingredients to list

Heat the vegetable oil in a saucepan over medium heat, and saute the
onion 5 minutes, until tender. Mix in carrot and mushrooms, and
continue cooking 5 minutes. Stir in broth, lentils, kidney beans,
peanuts, hazelnuts, soy sauce, and lemon juice. Season with thyme,
rosemary, cayenne pepper, and mixed spice. Bring to a boil, reduce
heat to low, and simmer 10 minutes. Stir in oats, cover, and simmer
20 minutes. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Lightly
grease a 5x9 inch baking pan. Stir the egg into the saucepan. Transfer
the mixture to the prepared baking pan. 

Bake 30 minutes, until firm.

Nimoy and Shatner: before they were icons

This is just what you think it is: a pre-Trek, pre-Captain Kirk William Shatner, he who appeared on various popular SF (or sci-fi or whatever they call it now) TV shows of the mid-'60s. I believe this one was The Outer Limits. He also did a couple of turns on The Twilight Zone, the monster-on-the-airplane-wing one and another one, much more low-key, in which he became addicted to a sort of Satanic coin bank that was foretelling his death. Jeffrey Hunter,the original Captain Kirk in the failed pilot, didn't seem to have this paranormal/space epic background, or if he did I don't remember it. He was in Biblical movies, I think, and didn't know how to do that infamous wrestling throw that bested Kirk's worst enemy, the Gorn. He was just too bland, and what they seemed to need on the show was the sort of histrionic performance that led to his deathless soliloquy: "No blah-blah-blah!"

Which see.

But wait, there's more! Leonard Nimoy also did at least one turn on The Outer Limits (that I know of - he may have done some Zone/One Step Beyond as well. He had a family to support.) It's eerie how similar this shot is: both of them looking at something disturbing on a screen, though Nimoy turns away with a mildly perplexed look on his face and Shatner looks as if he needs a Pepto-Bismol. Though these appearances weren't on the same episode, guess what! . . . 

They appeared together on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in 1964. I probably watched this episode, since I was slavishly devoted to the show (and unlike all my friends, I liked Robert Vaughn rather than David McCallum). Like everyone else, I had no idea these two journeyman actors would become cultural icons, and neither did they. All in a day's work.

Stop Alien Abductions! (an excerpt)

ALIEN ABDUCTEE FROM KENTUCKY WEARING A THOUGHT SCREEN HELMET

"Since trying Michael Menkin's Helmet, I have not been bothered by alien mind control. Now my thoughts are my own. I have achieved meaningful work and am contributing to society.

"My life is better than ever before. Thank you Michael for the work you are doing to save all humanity."

SEE ABDUCTION FLOWCHARTS FOR INFORMATION LINKING ALIEN ABDUCTIONS WITH THE AUTISM EPIDEMIC

AMERICAN LOCATIONS

History

Mississippi 3 July, 2015

A man with a thought screen helmet stopped the aliens from taking him but he was still being harassed by alien-human hybrids outside his house. The alien-human hybrids banged on the wall of the house repeatedly in the night to harass him. The house was on the edge of a forest in central Mississippi. In the middle of the night the man wore the helmet and went outside with a loaded gun. He fired the gun where he heard the hybrids moving. The hybrids left after the gun was fired and never returned.

Texas 2  November, 1999

Woman who reported abduction experiences as the type described by David Jacobs and Bud Hopkins. She said the alien brought her to orgasm by mental suggestion. It looked like the type of insect like alien reported in The Threat. She reports complete success and has been wearing a helmet 24 hours a day for a year and a half. Her husband says she even bathes with it on. This woman was extremely traumatized by her abduction experience. Her husband had her hospitalized for several months when she insisted she was abducted. After wearing the helmet for several months she said she became much more stable and focused.

Possible alien weaknesses (grays only)

Reliance on telepathy

When the alien's telepathic powers are neutralized by the "thought screen helmet" they do not attempt to abduct their victims. Without their telepathic power they cannot render their victims passive.
    
Vitamin C to kill implanted alien-hybrid embryos

One woman who now wears a thought screen helmet along with her husband reports that she killed four alien-hybrid fetuses in a row by taking a gram of vitamin C every hour for weeks. She used her alarm clock at night to awaken her. She reported that she could no longer feel the fetuses moving and the aliens were very angry at the deaths of the alien-hybrids they implanted in her. The aliens did remove a dead alien-hybrid fetus before implanting a live one at another time. This was before she started wearing a thought screen helmet.

Nutrient absorbing skin of grays

It was reported in The Threat that the grays sit in a vat of nutrients and absorb it through their skin. They do not eat as humans do. The grays nutrient absorbing skin may be a weakness as substances of strong odors or material sprayed on their skin may be absorbed directly into their body.

Perfumes

Several abductees report that aliens do not like perfume.  One abductee claims that they stopped an abduction by exposing strong cheap perfume to aliens. 

Michael Menkin was a Lieutenant (junior grade) in the U. S. Coast Guard Reserve. He is a 43 year member of the U.S. Naval Institute and a 16 year member of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). He is also a 29 year member of Sons of the American Revolution.
http://www.stopabductions.com/

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Alien abduction: out there

 

This is an excerpt from one of the very first web sites I ever went on, Stop Alien Abductions. It's a step-by-step tutorial on how to make a helmet to keep aliens from invading your thoughts. As far as I can see, it is completely serious. The site hasn't changed since 1991 or whenever-it-was that I began to fumble around and try to figure out what an Internet was.  I had a Tandy 101 computer (which I fondly called Jessica) which used those rolls of paper with holes on the edges that you tore off along the perforations. Oh, and - I had a fax machine. Remember that thin, shiny, curly fax paper, and the way the ink faded away after a while so you couldn't read it?  And just faxing in general? That noise that it made? Screeeeeech! And dial-up, remember that? And having to wait for someone to get off the phone before you went on the computer. Makes my face want to fall off. Anyway, this is just Step A, and a link to the whole gorgeous mess.

http://www.stopabductions.com/

Make a pattern to cut the Velostat sheets Hold the hat open and push the paper into the hat. Push the paper against the inside and top of the hat. A newspaper will do. Take the hat with the paper in it and put it over your head. The paper should be just above your ears and flush with the front and the back of the helmet. Pull the hat and the paper down over your head. Make sure the paper and the hat are secure against your head. Remove the hat and the paper, taking care to keep the paper with the hat. Use a marking pen or grease pencil and draw a line on the paper where it meets the hat. Remove the paper from the hat and cut along the line you just made. The paper shape is the pattern from which you will cut the 8 pieces of Velostat. (12 pieces if you use 4 mils thick Velostat.)

X Files Football Delay: my sentiments exactly

Yes. Though the reboot of The X Files was about as disappointing as I expected (especially Gillian Anderson's House of Wax/embalmed Botox face), it pissed me off that all the blathering hoopla after the football game, whoever-the-hell-was-playing-or-won, delayed the start of the show by about 25 minutes. I say "about" because it was damn impossible to tell just when it would start, or if it would in fact be one of those "we-now-join-our-regularly-scheduled-program-which-is-already-in-progress" piles of bullshit. Meaning it wouldn't be worth watching at all.

And this after seemingly months of overinflated hype.

I planned to record it and watch it tomorrow or later tonight, but when I saw it wasn't going to start on time, at all, I mean AT ALL, and the screaming and mindless comments went on and on and on, I scrambled around to try to record the next ten hours after the game to try to catch it. I still don't think I watched all of it - it seemed to bleed over several time slots, messily, and kept ending in mid-sentence, so I had to try to find where the next part of it was.

Fox has messed up big-time, but will take no responsibility for this, in spite of a torrent of complaints on their Facebook page, on Twitter, Reddit, etc.(including mine). But it was almost worth going through all that trauma to listen to this guy, whoever he is. I've never seen his videos before, they were posted only tonight, and his accent for some reason makes me want to do backflips. I don't mean that unkindly, I am a connaisseur of accents and this one is a doozy, almost plummy, Elizabethan, like deep-deep-South accents can be. And I totally understand his rage.

BLOGGER'S P. S. : The truth is TOTALLY "out there". All trace of this guy has disappeared. No, I mean it! My repeated  viewings of his video have been wiped from my YouTube history, something which - as far as I know -  can't be done. 

So what is the deeper significance of the mysterious Southern Guy, whose name I now forget?

Damn if I know. But I sure did like his accent.

True love triumphs in a page and a half

Woman’s World: $800 for Very Short Romance Stories

Woman’s World magazine accepts submissions of 800 word romance stories for their magazine.

Submissions must be mailed with a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope.

Manuscripts should be double-spaced in legible size type.

Send them to:

Woman’s World, 270 Sylvan Ave., Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632. Indicate Romance on the envelope.

According to their guidelines:

“We buy contemporary romances of 800 words. Stories must revolve around a compelling, true-to-life relationship dilemma; may feature either a female or male protagonist; and may be written in either the first or third person. Characters may be married, single, divorced or widowed; should be down-to-earth (no yuppies or jet-setters); and their dilemma should be poignantly or humorously conveyed. Please think carefully about a story’s setting, mood and plot, and tell the story with interesting action and dialogue. (Every sentence, paragraph, and scene of the story should deliver more information about your characters and their situation and/or briskly advance the storyline).

We are not interested in stories involving life-or-death matters, nor are we interested in fluffy, flyaway-style romance. When we say romance, what we really mean is relationship–whether it’s just beginning or is about to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The emphasis in our stories is on real life-which is why we do not buy science fiction, fantasy or historical romance.”

Their official guidelines are not available on their website. Submissions should be sent to the address above.

Say. . . what??

I knew I had put on a few pounds over the holidays, but. . . 

Convenant. Does that mean. . . convenient?

Outrageous tourist complaints (maybe).

Thomas Cook claims these are actual customer complaints, and maybe that is so. But I do find the egg-slicer thing a bit far-fetched.

1. "On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food."

2. "My fiancée and I requested twin-beds when we booked, but instead we were placed in a room with a king bed. We now hold you responsible and want to be re-reimbursed for the fact that I became pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked."

3. "We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish."

4. "We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our own swimsuits and towels. We assumed it would be included in the price."

5. "The beach was too sandy. We had to clean everything when we returned to our room."

6. "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as white but it was more yellow."

7. "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers in Puerto Vallartato close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time -- this should be banned."

8. "No-one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared."

9. "Although the brochure said that there was a fully equipped kitchen, there was no egg-slicer in the drawers."

10. "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local convenience store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts."

11. "The roads were uneven and bumpy, so we could not read the local guide book during the bus ride to the resort. Because of this, we were unaware of many things that would have made our holiday more fun."

12. "It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home. This seems unfair."

13. "I compared the size of our one-bedroom suite to our friends' three-bedroom and ours was significantly smaller."

14. "The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the resort.' We're trainee hairdressers and we think they knew and made us wait longer for service."

15. "When we were in Spain, there were too many Spanish people there. The receptionist spoke Spanish, the food was Spanish. No one told us that there would be so many foreigners."

16. "We had to line up outside to catch the boat and there was no air-conditioning."

17. "It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel."

18. "I was bitten by a mosquito. The brochure did not mention mosquitoes."

19. "They should not allow topless sunbathing on the beach. It was very distracting for my husband who just wanted to relax."

This brought to mind the ULTIMATE tourist rant from a long-ago but still classic Monty Python sketch (and by the way, I don't post a lot of photos just to be idiotic. I cannot take in huge blocks of text myself - my eyes need a break - and besides, many newspapers and internet sites now put a paragraph break after every sentence. Yet I am sometimes dissed for illustrating my stuff. It's not faaaaiiirrrrr. The worst thing my blog was ever called was "embarrassing", but I was back at it the next day, which speaks louder than any insults. And you can always take the option of not reading it. By the way, go ahead: DO cut and paste my stuff, so long as my name is on it, and a link to my blog. I want that.

Just one more point. Why do various people snipe at bloggers for posting photos and stuff, when Pinterest pirates absolutely everything with NO restrictions?

On with our story. (By the way. I've decided to quote the Monty Python "tourist sketch" verbatim, with no commercial interruption. It's better that way, but can you read it? I'm having some trouble.)

Tourist: Yes I quite agree I mean what's the point of being treated like sheep. 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 calamari's and two veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White's sun cream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh 'cos they "overdid it on the first day."

Bounder: (agreeing patiently) Yes absolutely, yes I quite agree...

Tourist: And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellvueses and Continentales 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.

Bounder: (beginning to get fed up) Yes, yes now......

Tourist: And then some adenoidal typists from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhea trying to pick up hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel and once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman Remains 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 color 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 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 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.

Bounder: Will you be quiet please

Tourist: And sending tinted postcards of places they don't realize they haven't even visited to "All at number 22, weather wonderful, our room is marked with an 'X'.

Bounder: Shut up

Tourist: Food very greasy but we've found a charming little local place hidden away in the back streets

Bounder: Shut up!

Tourist: where they serve Watney's Red Barrel and cheese and onion.......

Bounder: Shut up your bloody gob....

Tourist: crisps and the accordionist plays 'Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner'." And spending four days on the tarmac at Luton airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dried BEA-type sandwiches and you can't even get a drink of Watney's Red Barrel because you're still in England and the bloody bar closes every time you're thirsty and there's nowhere to sleep and the kids are crying and vomiting and breaking the plastic ash-trays and they keep telling you it'll only be another hour although your plane is still in Iceland and has to take some Swedes to Yugoslavia before it can load you up at 3 a.m. in the bloody morning and you sit on the tarmac till six because of "unforeseen difficulties", i.e. the permanent strike of Air Traffic Control in Paris - and nobody can go to the lavatory until you take off at 8, and when you get to Malaga airport everybody's swallowing "enterovioform" and queuing for the toilets and queuing for the armed customs officers, and queuing for the bloody bus that isn't there to take you to the hotel that hasn't yet been finished. And when you finally get to the half-built Algerian ruin called the Hotel del Sol by paying half your holiday money to a licensed bandit in a taxi you find there's no water in the pool, there's no water in the taps, there's no water in the bog and there's only a bleeding lizard in the bidet. And half the rooms are double booked and you can't sleep anyway because of the permanent twenty-four-hour drilling of the foundations of the hotel next door - and you're plagued by appalling apprentice chemists from Ealing pretending to be hippies, and middle-class stockbrokers' wives busily buying identical holiday villas in suburban development plots just like Esher, in case the Labour government gets in again, and fat American matrons with sloppy-buttocks and Hawaiian-patterned ski pants looking for any mulatto male who can keep it up long enough when they finally let it all flop out. And the Spanish Tourist Board promises you that the raging cholera epidemic is merely a case of mild Spanish tummy, like the previous outbreak of Spanish tummy in 1660 which killed half London and decimated Europe - and meanwhile the bloody Guardia are busy arresting sixteen-year-olds for kissing in the streets and shooting anyone under nineteen who doesn't like Franco. And then on the last day in the airport lounge everyone's comparing sunburns, drinking Nasty Spumante, buying cartons of duty free "cigarillos" and using up their last pesetas on horrid dolls in Spanish National costume and awful straw donkeys and bullfight posters with your name on "Ordoney, El Cordobes and Brian Pules of Norwich" and 3-D pictures of the Pope and Kennedy and Franco, and everybody's talking about coming again next year and you swear you never will although there you are tumbling bleary-eyed out of a tourist-tight antique Iberian airplane...

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Future past