Trouble in holiday paradise for Irish Mammy

I always had my suspicions that I couldn’t take Denis anywhere. Well, now I know. Nearly half the holiday gone and we haven’t had so much as a sniff of a bit of beach or anything. And only just out of the police station.

This was our first holiday in a good while. “C’mon away, Ann,” says Denis. “We might as well spend their inheritance. If I’m going to go out, I’m going out warm.”

He’s always on about their inheritance, as if we have a load of it.

There’s the house and his eircom shares (or whoever owns them now), which are worth tuppence halfpenny.

And we were going abroad too. “Costa Del Sol,” says himself, “to take the pasty look off us.”

“Speak for yourself,” I said. But he was right. Off with us to Malaga.

Jennifer booked the flights. “Ryanair. That’ll be about our level alright, I’d say,” says Dennis.

Then she bought us luggage as a wedding present. I don’t mean she bought us new luggage – I mean she paid for us to bring two bags over as a special treat. “That’s the most expensive present I’ve ever bought ye,” she says.

Anyway, we got to the airport in good time. “Too good a time,” says Dennis. We were there about three hours before the flight.

“I just want to make sure in case anything unforeseen happens,” I says.

“We’re here so early,” says Dennis, “there could’ve been a strike called after we arrived, they’d have it fixed and we’d still leave time.”

“You’ll see,” I said. “You’ll be glad of this extra time yet.” Well, as it turned out, I was half right. He was glad. I wasn’t.

We didn’t even have to queue at security. Another present from Jennifer. “I bought ye Fast Track,” she says. “That way you have a bit of time to make the kind of mistakes you usually make at the metal detector.”

“Excuse me!” I says. And then she reminded me about the time when, instead of going to the metal detector I tried to go through the gap between the metal detector and the conveyor belt-supermarket-checkout thing. I nearly got stuck.

Between the jigs and the reels, didn’t we have about two hours to spare before the flight.

It was fierce early in the morning and the place was full of all these fellas in lovely suits on the phone and in a fierce hurry.

Off to London to do something important, no doubt. Well Brexit’ll slow them down fairly lively.

They’ll have to queue with the poor foreign lads with the big suitcases covered in clingfilm now.

Dennis, of course, had a notion. “Come on, we’ll have a pint,” he says.

“What do you want a pint for at five o’clock?” I said. “You’ll be mad for the toilet and you’ll be queueing behind some sick child on the plane, bursting to go. And you and at your age: that’s not good for the prostate.”

“Ah forget about my prostate now,” he says. So we went in and it was just us and the stag parties inside in the place.

“You’ll have a wine, Ann, g’wan.”

“How can I drink wine at this hour? ’Tis like having a cough bottle with no cough?”

“Just take a photo and send it to Jennifer.”

I was sending Jennifer a text anyway to remind her to go in and make sure the alarm was working on the house, so I just sent the photo with “Here is ur father acting the eejit.”

There was a screen inside in the pub telling you when the flights were boarding.

They might as well have put up a note about how much of a pint you could drink.

Fellas were going up to it, squinting at the time and then shouting back: “You’d squeeze another one in, Stevo.”

Denis wasn’t far behind.

There was a cheer from the stag. Our flight had just flashed up and it was delayed.

“We’ll squeeze another one in,” says Denis.

And that’s where the trouble started.

To be continued...CL

As told to Colm O’Regan. Colm’s fourth book Bolloxology is available in all good bookshops.