Tuesday 6th May 2008, Home we go

I was buzzing when we got back to the hotel. We’d really been blasted with the sun and I expected to feel shitty, but I didn’t. I was on top of the world. It was six o’clock and we had just three and a half hours left in paradise.

We spent an hour wandering around the complex taking photos of everything that we hadn’t captured. I felt a bit sad to be leaving but nowhere near as bad as I’d felt having to leave Prague the year before, and yet this holiday had been so much more luxurious than that one was. As great as the week was I do think that I’d have been bored with another week of it.

At the hammocks by the river Russ told me to take my top off for a photo, just to have photographic evidence that it had been plenty hot enough to sunbathe topless. I stripped to my bikini bottoms and lay back in the hammock. I turned my head to the right to look across the river and saw an old man in his boat getting a right old eyeful. As Russ took the photograph he brought his boat in closer to get a better perv’s eye view and Russ said that I’m incorrigible when I clambered none too elegantly out of the hammock (have you ever tried getting out of one of those things like a lady?) and mooned at him, the dirty old goat.

Our last trip to the Relaxation Centre was a brief affair. I wanted to swim and make love and have a sauna, but we only had time for a very quick dip in the pool and a shower. We changed into our going home clothes and it all felt very final.

Getting ready to leave had taken us right up to dinnertime and everything was rushing towards home time now. We had two hours left and we’d arranged to meet Judy and Pierce in the bar for a last drink after dinner.

Russ and I split up to go to our favourite stations of the restaurant for food. I was aware that I didn’t have long to eat and didn’t want to risk making myself feel sick before having to travel. I had some hot bread and salad. Russ made straight for the barbeque and came back with a plateful of meats. He almost poisoned me.

“Want some?”

“No ta.”

“Aw, come on, it’s our last meal. Just try a bit with your salad.”

I spied a piece of meat that had the griddle marks scoured into it. It was sizzling hot and oozing with some kind of glaze. It did look good so I took a piece of that.

I put some in my mouth, chewed, tasted the sweetness of the topping, chewed again and almost barfed. It was bloody liver. Now I admit it didn’t look like liver, or smell like liver. But with the second chew the nasty dry yeukyness of it exploded into my mouth. It was disgusting… but I did manage to chew some more to mash it up and swallow it.

“Oh thanks for warning me,” said Russ pleasantly. He hates the stuff too. Huh, I didn’t get any warning. Russ had taken two large pieces of it so once again the cats ate well.

A few minutes later Kerry, our rep, came to our table and asked if she could join us. Russ said later that he’d wished it had just been the two of us for our last meal but I disagreed. We can eat together any time; it was nice to have some company. I hadn’t taken to Kerry, but I’d judged her wrong. She was loud and had a bit of a standoffish manner, but she was actually very nice. I was really interested to hear about her life She’d been a rep for four years and had been in Belek for three of them. She’d met and fallen in love with a local man and I was fascinated to hear about their relationship. Her boyfriend hadn’t had much of an education and didn’t speak any English at all when they’d met. I enjoyed hearing about how they’d had to get used to each other’s different language and culture. Kerry was excited because just that week they’d rented a house and she’d moved out of the rep accommodation and into their first home together. She said that his parents, whom she’d never met, were coming to stay with them the following week and would probably end up living with them because that’s the Turkish way. She was getting everything just as she wanted it in their house and said that Turkish mothers are very interfering and, as a race, have a compulsion for reorganising cupboards and doing all of your housework. I want a Turkish mother-in-law.

Suddenly she said, “Hey, you two like karaoke, don’t you.” You could almost see Russ’ ears prick up. “I’m having a housewarming party tomorrow, we’ve got karaoke on. Why don’t you come and join us. I promise you it’ll be a good night?”

Russ’ face was a picture, finally the chance of a decent night out and we couldn’t go. We explained that we were on the countdown to our final hour in Belek. Later, in a different conversation Russ told her about my books and she made us write a list of them and promised to buy some. She really was a very nice lady.

Back in the bar we sat in ‘our’ seats for the very last time. Russ had a final half tumbler of vodka and I had a fanta. I sat with my drink while Russ ran round to the pool kiosk at nine o’clock to get the photographs that we’d bought and were waiting to have developed. They’d told us to pick them up at nine and Russ said that we had to leave the complex at nine thirty.

He was ages. I drank my drink and said goodbye to all of the bar staff and waiters. I found Yusaff, my favourite security guard, who had marked our cards on the first night and gave him a big cuddle. He said that he was going to come and see us ‘in Oxford’ when he visits England. Why do all the Turks think that everybody lives in Oxford? If it was London I could understand it. We only had a few minutes left when Russ came charging back jubilantly waving the photos, there’d been some hold up and it had looked as though we wouldn’t get them at one point. We ran to the pick up point and made it with three minutes to spare.

The coach was already waiting for us and the rep was standing outside waving her clipboard and pointedly looking at her watch.

“Huh `bout time. We were just about to go without you. Where have you been?” She spoke to us as though we were schoolchildren.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“You’re late, we were just about to leave.”

“Actually, if you look at your watch again, you’ll see that we still have a couple of minutes until nine thirty.” I glared at her and got on the coach…

…where we sat for another quarter of an hour waiting for the people who really were late!

Another couple arrived about five minutes after us. And then we were just waiting for one couple, Judy and Pierce. I said that we hadn’t seen them in the restaurant and that we’d been supposed to meet them for a drink in the bar but they hadn’t turned up.

Suddenly a taxi came screeching up to the hotel. Judy and Pierce scrabbled out of it with loads of carrier bags. They were pretty drunk but seemed very happy.

They sat opposite us and told us they’d spent the day in Belek. It was market day but they’d been buying (copy) designer gear. They’d spent a fortune and showed us the huge gold rings that they’d each bought. They were glugging down loads of water on the coach in an attempt to sober up so that they’d be allowed to fly. Talk about cutting it fine.

Russ and I had a chance to look at our photos. They cost twenty English pounds for six and they were very good. I particularly liked two of them, one of us by the pool with me sitting in a chair and Russ standing behind and one of the head and shoulder shots of Russ on his own. I didn’t see the good bits of the photos with me on them and only focussed in on the negatives. My hair was soaking wet and hung in straggles. In one I was laughing and showed my fillings. My face was shiny from being greased with baby lotion. Russ looked fantastic. He really is very photogenic. Despite there only being six years between us (to the day) he looked like a sodding male model and I looked like a male model’s mother. He told me that I looked beautiful and although that is undeniably the wrong word to have used, I can sort of see what he meant behind the compliment. I did look very, very happy, my eyes were shining and I was smiling widely and I suppose, in a way, even for an unattractive woman that’s a pure form of beauty.

We were on the coach for ages, which was good because it left less time to hang around the airport just waiting to fly. We had to pick up at every hotel on the strip and it took us over an hour just to clear Belek. As we got off the coach everybody was fawning around the rep and hugging and kissing her. She swapped mobile numbers with several off the guests. Having decided that I really didn’t like the woman I muttered a very terse thank you and left. That made me a bit sad. I wanted to be one of her favourites too. I suppose they were people from the hotel in which she was based. As Kerry had been based at The Letoonia. We hadn’t really seen much of any of the reps.

We were in for one hell of a shock at check in. Judy and Pierce were ahead of us in the queue and had to pay about five quid in excess weight duty. Despite their massive spending spree that day their luggage weighed considerably less than mine. I began to panic and insisted that we rearrange the luggage before we got to the head of the queue. It’s a good job we did too. I put some of my heavier stuff in Russ case and dispersed other stuff into the hand luggage. That left me with one carrier bag that I filled with clothes after putting on my fleece and making Russ wear his coat.

At the scales my suitcase was still way over and I had to pay thirty five pounds in excess. We figured that most of it was due to the heavy boxes of Turkish delight that I’d insisted on buying. It could have been worse, the lady didn’t notice the carrier bag that should have gone on the scales but didn’t. That must have weighed at least five kilos and at a six quid a kilo that would have been another thirty pounds. Russ put his arm around me and cuddled up as I craftily manoeuvred away from the desk with our illegal cargo and we legged it to the escalators feeling like a pair of airport terrorists. With every step I expected to be stopped. And then we were through customs and sitting on the benches. I had a fit of the guilts. Pilots have to work out fuel per weight of the craft. If everybody smuggled an extra five kilos on, that would mean that there wouldn’t be enough fuel on board to get us home. I decided that I was going to go and declare my sins… but then Russ came back with two cups of coffee. It was in paper cups with a third of the cup filled with coffee, another third filled with froth and the top third completely empty. It had cost him eight pounds for the two coffees, I figured, sod it, the airport owes us.

We only had to wait half an hour before boarding, suddenly it was turned midnight and I was still going strong. I smiled at the airport’s stroke of genius. They give all of the young children balloons. The kids who five minutes before had been fractious and cranky chased those balloons all over the place and had a great time. Something so simple that cost pennies, made such a difference.

In the queue to board the plane we were behind an Indian family, Mother, father and three young children. The little ones were all young and tearful at being parted from their balloon games. Mum was holding a tiny baby only a few months old and a huge piece of hand luggage. Dad had hold of the two older kids and another bag and was struggling to juggle a double buggy.

I tapped him on the shoulder and offered to take the pram onto the plane for him; I only had one carrier bag and said that it would free him up better to see to the children. He told me stiffly that he could manage, thank you. I felt awful. I think the man thought that I was criticising his parenting, as by this point all three children were yelling. I thought they were a lovely family and that wasn’t my intention at all. I well remember having Marty with us when he was a baby and what a nightmare flying was. I genuinely felt sorry for them and just wanted to help.

We took our seats; a face appeared from behind us poking between our seats. He had grey hair, an insincere smile and a gold tooth. A familiar voice spoke, “Sir, madam, I have here the finest of the emerald ring. It only twenty million Engleesh pounds. You buy for the lady’s birthday, yes? We take visa.” Okay, I’m joking, he wasn’t there at all … but it wouldn’t have surprised me and I had a glance behind me just to make sure and then turned back quickly when I saw that it was the family from hell that I’d argued with on the journey out.

The flight should have been so much easier than coming. Russ and I were seated together. I had the window seat and a young lad of slender proportions was sitting next to Russ. It was pitch black outside and I always think night flying can be oppressive and even more claustrophobic. I was fine for the first half an hour or so and then the tiredness hit me, I couldn’t get comfortable no matter how I arranged myself, everything ached. Russ and I put the armrest dividing us up giving an extra few inches. I tried cuddling up to him to sleep. I tried resting my head against the window and I tried folding my arms onto my table and putting my head on them. No matter what I did I couldn’t get comfortable and I couldn’t nod off. The flight was only four hours but it seemed to go on forever. After take off and settling I hated every second of it.

Check out was speedy and despite being absolutely dog tired and irritable, once we cleared the airport some of my good spirits returned aided by my first cigarette in hours. It wasn’t much cooler than the nights had been in Turkey. Russ joined me with the luggage and asked where Adam was.

“I dunno,” I replied, oblivious to all but my lungs filing pleasantly with cigarette smoke. I didn’t care if we never got home. Adam hadn’t arrived. We waited ten minutes and then Russ rang him. It was daft o’clock in the morning and a sleepy Adam answered the phone. Considering that he was supposed to be carting our luggage across the airport to his car this wasn’t a good sign. He wasn’t pleased to be woken up, neither was his mother who Russ heard yelling presumably, and hopefully, from the next bedroom. But it wasn’t all doom and gloom, Andy explained that he’d had another run on and that somebody else was picking us up and should in fact already be there.

Well he wasn’t.

Five minutes later a little old man who looked to be about ninety, but in fact told us at least fifteen times that he was sixty-seven came huffing up to us. He didn’t offer to help me with my case and despite feeling at least sixty-seven myself at that moment I thought that it was probably wise given his decrepit condition.

Initially I was glad that it wasn’t Adam who had come to collect us, but once in the car Tom confessed that he was Adam’s uncle … and he was worse! At least Adam for all his droning doesn’t moan.

“I’m too bloody old for this bloody lark,” he said, as we politely muttered our sympathy. “I’m sixty bloody seven. I shouldn’t have to come out driving all bloody night for that lazy bugger.”

“Hmmm,” we agreed.

“I tell yer, I’m prob`ly gonna fall asleep at the wheel and kill us all before we get home. He’ll be sorry he asked me then.”

I know I’m given to exaggeration but that’s exactly what he said. You’ve got to admire the man’s customer relations. I must say that instilled loads of confidence in us as to his ability to get us home in one piece. Much as it pained me I vowed to stay awake and keep him talking for the duration of the journey, that was my last conscious thought before my head landed on Russ’ knee and I went out for the count.