My Dad had claimed a "whiplash" injury
and with the compensation, took my brother and I on our first post-divorce family holiday. Two weeks cruising round the south coast of Turkey on a massive wooden yacht.

"What paradise!" I can hear the ladies squeal, except I was 15, pale, painfully skinny and looked absolutely stupid in shorts. All of my T-shirts were of the black band-named variety, I fucking hate seafood, I was the youngest (aside from my detested sibling) by at least 15 years, and I can't fucking swim.

The boat was of the type you see on posters in Turkish cafes; long, double-masted, with 8 bedrooms, inhabited by couples and a group of cackling middle-aged sisters. So there I was, lounging against the deck rail watching my Dad and a few of the other people larking about in the water, when a dim brickie from Essex (complete with standard-issue blonde wife) crept up behind me, grabbed my ankles and somersaulted me over the rail.

The gentle play of a summer sun beating down on the softly rippling Aegean Sea was lost on me as I sploshed through the surface, taking in an acrid lungful of brine and promptly losing consciousness. According to my brother, the wife was braying like an asthmatic mule at the comedic antics of her husband, neither of whom cared that I couldn't swim, and both unaware of my rapid comatose descent to the bottom of the bay.

By the time I'd been rescued baywatch-style and been revived mouth-to-mouth style by the deeply-moustachiod Turkish captain, the wife was in tears and the brickie throwing a massive strop along the lines of "how da fuck woz I ta know 'ee coodunt swim. Fahking shtoopid takin' 'im on a boat, wonnit."

I came home lobster-sunburnt, brain-smashingly bored, even thinner from a calimari-based diet, and with an indepth fear of all seaside holidays that still stings ten years later. Thanks Dad.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Fri 3 Aug 2007, 14:36, Reply)