The Holiday

When T agreed to me having a holiday I was flabbergasted, by this time I was so ill even his mother was concerned. She must have had some strong words with him. Once he agreed I phoned Ellen and explained that the MIL had invited me on holiday & would she come to, she asked the location of the villa & I replied Majorca, as this was the information I'd been given, Ellen not keen on Majorca as she'd been there many times before, but agreed to join us.
The next day I phoned her with more information, I'd found out more about our destination
I suppose I should have realised the holiday was doomed from the start; I mean you don’t expect a holiday with your Mother-in-Law to be the best holiday ever do you? Not if you’ve got a Mother-in-Law like mine you don’t anyway.
I think my relationship is fairly typical of a lot of mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationships. I am not and have never been good enough for her son. Let me give you an example, when T and I announced our intention to make our relationship legal, I thought Doris would be pleased, she had never been happy about us living in sin. Not from any particular moral standpoint, although she claimed that was the reason, no, the real reason was. What will the neighbours think? Anyway back to our decision to marry, was this greeted with joy and relief? No after looking at me measuringly for a few minutes she finally said “You do realise you are very limited in you choice of dress don’t you?”
I assumed she was referring to the fact that I was on the plump side, this was rather a case of the pot calling the kettle, but I decided to let the remark pass, but that was not what she was getting at.
“I shall make my own wedding dress” I announced, I made most of my own clothes so I didn’t feel there would be a problem. “I’ve seen a Laura Ashley style fabric I like it’s white with pink flowers on it.”
“No! No! No! That will never do! You must wear white with a lavender spot, that is the only thing suitable for you, you are soiled goods, and you can’t wear pink & white!”
T stepped between us before I orphaned him on the spot.
So as you can imagine our relationship is not one of particular closeness. You can no doubt understand my reluctance when she phoned and asked if I would like to spend a fortnight in Majorca with her, now this is not the first time she has asked me to go on holiday with her, she thinks that families should do things together, even at the risk of bloodshed. A few years ago she took her other daughter-in-law Bella (who is a paragon among women) to Egypt with her, it turned out to be a complete disaster as Bella was struck down with some sort of tourist depression and cried and sobbed her way across Egypt, she cried at the sphinx, she cried through the Valley of the Kings, in fact she cried so much, a rumour started that she had come to Egypt to irrigate the place. All this lachrymosity did not go down well with Doris, Doris was firm believer it a stiff upper lip especially when in the presence of foreigners.
After failing miserably to think of an acceptable reason to refuse. I bowed to the inevitable and agreed to go, after all she had mellowed over the years and despite her disapproval of me even she had to admit that my children had turned out well in spite of me.
As soon as I accepted Doris asked me if I had friend I could bring as the Villa she was borrowing from a friend slept 6, Doris had invited her sister, who in turn had invited 2 friends, therefore it only needed 1 more to complete the group. Who could I ask? It had to be somebody with a sense of humour and nerves of steel to cope with Doris for 2 weeks. Someone who could also cope with the gibbering wreck I become after a few days of Doris’s criticisms and carping. Now I only have one friend like that so I phoned Ellen, she loves to travel and we have holidayed together before, I felt pretty sure we could survive 2 weeks together without coming to blows. To my delight and relief Ellen accepted immediately. She wasn’t to keen on Majorca any more than I was but 2 weeks in the sun for £200 wasn’t bad.
I phoned Doris to tell her we were now a group of six and was somewhat disconcerted when she mentioned that the weather in the Algarve would be quite warm in November, I couldn’t see the importance of this fact until I realised that we were in fact going to Portugal not Majorca. I phoned Ellen who was happy with this, as she preferred Portugal. The following day I phoned Ellen again it seems Doris had booked the wrong flights so the cost had risen by £100; Ellen was philosophical and still agreed to come. The following day I phoned again to tell her we were flying from Bristol, not Heathrow as Doris lives near Bristol. Ellen still agreed to come. This went on almost up until the departure date as Doris discovered more and more alterations, from the size of the villa to the fact that the complex was being refurbished and all the roadways were being replaced, she kept this little gem to herself until we were airborne
The day of the holiday dawned with heavy rain and gusty winds.
Doris phoned again “Don’t set off until you have phoned the airport, these gales might stop the planes flying”
I dutifully phoned, when the man on the other end stopped laughing, he assured me that the flight would still take place.
We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare, which was just as well because I then discovered that Doris had mislaid my ticket, no sorry, that’s wrong, I had lost my ticket, it must have been me who lost it as she remembered giving me both mine and Ellen’s ticket as we arrived at her house. Ellen opened the sealed envelope Doris had given us. There was only one ticket inside, hers. So obviously I’d lost my ticket.
At this point I thought it might be best if I tried to get the next train home, but Ellen refused to let me go. Eventually Doris found my ticket, she had used it to work out her milk bill and then screwed it up, and she meant to throw it in the bin before she left home but she forgot!
On we go to check in our baggage, all the suitcases are ok but we hit a snag with Doris’s hand luggage, it weighs 17 kilos, fortunately my hand luggage weighs less than 1 kilo so they let us through. After a few minutes of lugging Doris’s hand luggage around (she can’t carry it herself, it’s too heavy) I finally gasp out “Just what have you got in this bag?”
“Just some cheese and a few biscuits” answered Doris.
“Well it feels like a whole bloody truckle” I mutter through gritted teeth.
We stagger through to the departure lounge, Doris sits down Ellen and I go for a wander round the shops, after going round every shop four times there’s still three hours to kill, and as Ellen doesn’t want to start reading the book she has with her she picks up a tabloid newspaper abandoned by another traveller, Doris sniffed disapprovingly, after reading the paper Ellen replaced it on a nearby seat for someone else to read. Doris smiled “I am so glad you’re not taking that paper with you, I wouldn’t like people to think we read the tabloids”
Next stop passport control. At this point Doris decides that she should look after the passports don’t ask me why, all I know is that she waited until we were at the top of the airplane steps being buffeted by the wind from the engines, before deciding she couldn’t manage her handbag and walking stick and the passports so she passes me the passports dropping mine in the process.
Once we had retrieved the passports we found our seat. Doris held up the embarkation for about 10 minutes while she struggled to fold up her walking stick, my suggestion that she sat down, and then fold up her stick, fell on deaf ears. Eventually she sat down and the rest of the plane filled up. Next Doris wanted her hand luggage placed in one of the overhead compartments, unfortunately I was not strong enough to lift 17 kilo’s over my head so an airline stewardess came to help, unfortunately she couldn’t lift it either, eventually a tall, burly young man came to our rescue and managed to lift it. By now I was getting dirty looks from the rest of the passengers who thought the bag was mine. The rest of the journey proved fairly uneventful. The only problem arose when the meal was served; we had sausage and mash with a small bread roll. Now Doris is a lady rather generous proportions but she wants to make sure everybody knows that this is not because she eats too much. So the bread roll proved something of a dilemma. Doris solved this by offering half her bread roll to every other passenger within shouting distance, assuring them that she couldn’t possibly eat such a huge meal, there being no takers nearby Doris then wanted me to traverse the rest of the plane seeking anyone who could be persuaded to eat the rest of her roll, she sulked for the rest of the journey when I refused.
We finally arrived at our villa at around 10.30 in the evening, only to find that the other three women who were sharing the villa with us had argued on the flight over and were no longer speaking to each other. By this time we were exhausted and all we wanted to do was go to bed, but Ellen and I were sharing the pull out bed in the lounge and it was broken and took us nearly an hour to turn it from a settee to a bed. It was now nearly midnight; Ellen and I fell into bed, desperate for sleep. Unfortunately we got very little, as Doris doesn’t sleep well and she got up five times during the night, three times to go to the toilet and twice for a cup of tea. When she got up for breakfast at 7o’clock I was sat at the table having given up all hope of sleep at 5.30 when the dawn chorus started. Ellen staggered out of bed “Bloody Doris, if she didn’t drink so much sodding tea she wouldn’t have to keep getting up for the toilet”
As soon as everyone was up Doris set about making breakfast and making arrangements for lunch. The rest of the group wanted to check out our surroundings, by the time we were ready to leave it was 11 o’clock so Doris’s request that we all return at 1 for lunch was not well received, and we eventually arranged to return at 3 o’clock. The five of us set of to check out the facilities on the site, after a while we split into 2 groups as Olive wasn’t talking to Liz or Margaret and the constant sniping was becoming a nuisance. By the end of the day we realised why Olive was so keen to go everywhere with Ellen & I. She had been divorced for almost 20 years and had decided that this holiday was to change all that, to that end she felt she had a better chance with Ellen & I as we are both under 55 whereas Liz and Mable are both over 60. Unfortunately she hadn’t bargained for the fact that Ellen & I had no interest in meeting men. As we started to explore the complex we discovered the reason so many of the other guests were carrying golf bags, Doris had managed to book us all in to a villa adjoining the best golf course in Portugal, this explained the extortionate cost of the holiday, most people were happy to pay extra for the pleasure of such close proximity to a golf course, as none of us play golf we were not so impressed. By the end of week one Ellen & I were beginning to show signs of exhaustion, Doris’s nocturnal rambles had not decreased, & Doris was in a permanent sulk as she wasn’t sharing here sister’s room. Doris’s room mate Olive was unable to sleep through Doris’s snoring, so she sat and watched TV until 2am when it closed down. Liz & Mable were early birds and were in the kitchen cooking porridge of all things every morning by 7 am! This meant Ellen & I were averaging 5 hours sleep a night with these few hours still being interrupted by Doris’s rambles. As there weren’t enough seats for every one to sit on in the villa, we didn’t even get the chance to snooze during the day. We had the option to swap villas after the first week & no one was keen except Ellen & I, the others were not keen on the upheaval but were vociferously over ruled, by Ellen & I. We changed villas on Saturday, which didn’t take Ellen & I very long as we still had our clothes in suitcases, but took all day for the other ladies, as they had made themselves at home by the. The new villa had 3 bedrooms (hooray, no more sleeping in the lounge) & had a pool with patio. We were all settled in by 8 pm at which point Ellen & I went to bed to try & catch up on our lost sleep, we didn’t re-appear until 10am the following morning both of us having slept for a full 12 hours.
As we were booked on to a golf complex, there was very little for us to do as we don’t play golf, we were 3 kilometres from the nearest shop and in the other direction 2 kilometres from the mudflats & the sea. Despite this I hada fantastic holiday, I sat on a sunlounger for most of it & read 28 books. By the time I returned home I was rested, fighting fit & fighting mad.