Behind the holiday brochures

Madge and David, mother and son, are regular travellers and they have the room next to ours. They have their fair share of holiday horror stories.
 
Last November they were in Siri Lanka the fulfillment of Madge’s life long ambition to see elephants. She is in her 70s and not that mobile so time is precious.
"They never told us there was a four hour trip to get to the sanctuary and another four hours back.... Or that the heat would be a minimum of 35c in the shade."
 
Likewise their trip to see the Pyramids while staying in Sharm El Sheikh.
 
They realised too late, that it involved a seven-hour journey - both ways- across the desert under armed guard.
 
That’s the trouble with holiday brochures. It's not that they can be misleading but sometimes they are economical with the truth. It's often what they leave out that is important.
We had assumed our hotel came with a beach since the whole of Barbados is ringed with them yet no mention was made in their effusive description.
 
We now know why. There isn't one unless you call a pocket-handkerchief of a beach visible only when the tide is out.
Not that it bothers us since we are not beach bunnies.
 
Yes we have had some hiccups inevitable in the tropics, like the power cut on the first evening while eating our dinner.
 
That is when we realised the purpose of the candle and box of matches in our room.
I was grateful for the torch on my iPhone because otherwise we would have had great difficulty finding our way back in total darkness to our room.
 
 
Perry  (“I was named after Perry Como”) a Welsh man from Fishguard told me the following day that he had walked into the wrong room in the dark and stumbled across a couple making love.
 
I am always wary of unexpected items in hotel rooms ever since a skiing holiday in Bulgaria when we found a bucket of snow in our bedroom.
The reason soon became apparent when we tried to flush the lavatory.
 
Talking of mothers and sons, Gloria whom we shared a taxi with to the George Washington dinner the other night, had an unfortunate experience.
 
"This young man came to fix a lamp in my room and he said how good it was of my son to come on holiday with me. I said that’s not my son it’s my husband. That’s the second time it’s happened to me.”
 
I am waiting for someone to make the same mistake with M and myself. On several occasions in the past women, always women, have sidled up to him and asked:" Are you in films?"  Turns out they think he is an ageing Harrison Ford.
 
Or: "Are you someone off the telly?"  
 
They try to conceal their disappointment when he shakes his head:
“No, I am a retired chemist.”
I have never been mistaken for someone famous.