Re: Phil's Phings

Just a quick spot of boasting! My story 'If You're Happy And You Know It' is one of the winners in Wattpad's Memoir Month

If you're interested, it is about 10th in this list: http://www.wattpad.com/list/95713943-memoir-month

Re: Phil's Phings

Well done Phil!

Re: Phil's Phings

Congrats Phil, always nice to have your efforts appreciated.

Re: Phil's Phings

And well may you be proud Phil, very comical observations well told, fair play to you.

Re: Phil's Phings

There are many good writers on Over50's. I take my hat off to you all.

PS well done Phil.

Re: Phil's Phings

You can't see it from here, but I'm blushing

Thanks everyone. Very kind of you to put up with my boasting!

Re: Phil's Phings

Thought you might like to see the sequel to the article that won in 'Memoir Month'. This relates to the cruise I've just come back from.

Happy Now?

“Have you been ashore yet?” he asked, in that peculiar sort of whine and inflection that you just know is the preface to an Englishman about to embark on a damn good moan.

“Erm, yes.” We replied, wary of how this conversation might go.

“Not much there, is there?” he said, with an expression like a spaniel whose tail you’ve just trodden on.

I decided to take a sudden and abiding interest in the lift’s progress up the floors but my wife, who hates negativity, obviously decided to engage in the debate. “Well, I think…” but they were never to know as we had reached their floor and they, and their anoraks, and their little cloud of depression, headed off to find a few like-minded souls with which to commune.

I’ve written before about the British attitude to happiness, i.e, it’s something to be avoided if at all possible. Every time that I think that I’m being hard on my fellow countrymen, they seem to go out of their way to provide confirmatory evidence. Like the man and his wife in the lift, for example. He was referring to the port of call where we were then docked, Alesund in Norway.

Now, I don’t know quite what he was expecting, but this strikes me as a pleasant little town arranged around a rocky outcrop in the Norwegian Fjords. The architecture is interesting, the scenery majestic and, on the whole, it’s got a thick edge over Burton upon Trent. So what were they expecting, I wonder? I suppose if I had been sufficiently interested I could have asked, although our conversation was mercifully too short to allow for much in the way of interrogation. Perhaps they had singing and dancing fishermen in traditional garb in mind, or shoals of carefully choreographed herring swimming through the harbour? Kippers skipping from stone to stone?

What this couple were really hoping for, in my opinion, were a few other of similar temperament so that they could have a good old choral moan. Being trapped in the vicinity of one of these sessions is always hugely dispiriting as they seem to drive every drop of optimism and positivity from their immediate surroundings.

This cruise actually started with an encounter with one of these positivity vacuums. As it was the start of our holiday, I was reasonably chipper, which is not my natural demeanour if I’m honest. I have been told that I usually resemble an undertaker going through a lean patch. Anyway, despite the howling wind and the rain coming down sideways as I dumped the luggage at the cruise terminal, I was in relatively good spirits. The past few days had been sunny and warm at home, and the weather forecast had led me to believe we could expect much the same for the next few days in Norway.

I was dutifully shovelling my various items of hand luggage through the scanner, including a sort of white panama-type hat which, although somewhat redundant in the wind and rain of Southampton, would not fit into our normal luggage, when I was surprised by a comment from the woman overseeing the process.

“You won’t need that!” She said emphatically.

I tore my gaze from my collection of valuables, now consigned to the scanner, and ceased my nervous patting down of my pockets to try to ensure I had left nothing behind which the body scanner to which the body scanner would object. I discovered that she was holding my hat aloft and regarding it with some disdain.

“I’m sorry?” I said, typically apologising for not having heard an entirely unexpected and unrequested comment.

“This hat,” she pointed to the offending article, “I’m saying you won’t be needing that where you’re going.”

“Really?” I replied, somewhat lamely.

“I went to Norway in May last year,” she volunteered, “and it never stopped raining” she added with some disgust.

I almost felt ashamed of going at all. Her attitude seemed to be that, if I had the sense I was born with, I would turn back now and desist from this reckless adventure. Any chirpiness I might have experienced was now left whimpering and dejected by the check-in desk. I wondered if the British Tourist Authority were sponsoring her to make departing citizens feel guilty about taking foreign holidays? If so, they were succeeding beyond their wildest dreams.

Re: Phil's Phings

Winding Up the Holiday Brits!

You might think that the idea of the British Tourist Authority (BTA) having a network of agents dedicated to making travel to foreign parts a miserable experience rather outlandish, but there’s no shortage of evidence to support the theory.

For example, many years ago I was travelling back from France with a mate of mine. Between us, we had just about enough money left to buy either a breakfast or a few pints on the Calais/Dover ferry, so you can guess which way the choice went. This was in the days when the Calais-Dover route was operated by Sealink, a part of British Rail, and there were no other options, so you can imagine the level of customer service.

The young man behind the bar was clearly one of the BTA agents. Even though there were few customers in the bar, as this was the early hours of the morning and most people had more sense, he still made a point of ignoring anyone waiting at the bar for as long as he could. When finally forced to acknowledge their presence, he never made eye contact or engaged in conversation of any sort. Instead, he would jerk his head in the general direction of the putative customer and grunt. By this means he would take your order and return with something approaching what you had asked for.

As the bar was particularly quiet, and my mate was cursed with an enquiring mind, he managed to engage this surly youth in conversation, whereupon he (the youth) admitted that this performance of his was all about promoting his philosophy of ‘winding up the holiday Brits’. He saw it as his duty to reduce his customers to seething balls of impotent rage, which would then be let loose on our continental cousins with predictable results.

I will always remember standing at the bar, chatting to him, whilst behind us a group of blokes with whom he had clearly been particularly successful in his endeavours, jeered at him and yelled obscenities, which he resolutely ignored. Eventually, things reached such a pitch that an object came flying over our heads from the restive tribe behind. Without missing a beat in our conversation, he reached up and caught the projectile, which he then casually examined. “Looks like I’ve won myself a lighter” he announced calmly to the room as a whole. Now that’s a professional – I hope the BTA gave him a medal!

Re: Phil's Phings

I've written an article about a terrible day out at Skegness in the 1970s, which has been published in the Derby Telegraph. The first part didn't make it onto the newspaper's website, but you can find it on my blog at:

http://philwhiteland.blogspot.co.uk/...an-part-1.html

The second part was published today and can be found at

http://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/Bygo...ail/story.html

See if it brings back any memories

Re: Phil's Phings

It did indeed bring back memories of my family days at the seaside Phil, God how I hated sitting in the open with the sand and wind blowing all around us, always a breeze at the seaside, and all the while trying to look like we were enjoying it. Then the clamour and the dash for seats on the train coming home, getting into the house and finally collapsing on the bed knackered, what fun.
Thanks again for the great read.