A holiday that involves someone else's family.
The only lousy holiday as an adult.


A mate of mine's parents owned a seaside holiday home. For a few years in a row we'd spend a long weekend there in the Autumn. Soft scenery, big waves, sea air, lovely. We'd also stock up on booze, dope and have fields full of mushrooms for the picking (hence the autumnal visits).

All was going according to plan until, after a long walk to build up our appetites and a few pints to warm us up, we returned to the house. To our dismay, there was my mates dad sitting at the kitchen table with a half-empty bottle of whiskey. Himself and the missus had one argument too many and he'd given her the "I'm leaving and never coming back" speech.

Fuck. No drugs then. After a sullen meal, we headed for the local village pub where we did our best to ignore his utterly pissed dad and to try and salvage something from the weekend. The next morning my mate took his dad for a round of golf and the rest of us took off across the fields in search of certain fungal produce. My mate returned alone saying that his dad was still in the pub. We had a meal, smoked a few joints and settled down for a night playing cards and drinking hot whiskey.

Then my mate got a call from his mum on his mobile (this was 1995 when they still weren't that common). She'd gotten a "Farewell cruel world" call from a very drunken husband who said he was going to leap to his doom from the clifftops. She'd already informed the police and they were on their way. "Fuckitty-Fuck!" we say, "There's loads of dope and several sheets of tinfoil covered in drying mushrooms!" We managed to hide everything in the boot of our car and waited for the law. A cold and very wet night was spent by us all walking the clifftops in search of his dad. He was found, in the wee hours of the morning, having sobered up and decided to call off his suicide and go home. We then had the toe-curling embarrassment of him blubbing away while he apologised to the police, us and his wife for his behaviour.



We never borrowed the house again. Mind you, 12 years on and his parents are still together.



P.S.

Re: The 'Cheapest Meal' thing.
A mate once made the three of us walk most of Barcelona city centre as he couldn't find a menu that was (A) Reasonable and (B) Contained three courses that he fancied all on the one menu - "No, that has only a nice starter and main - no decent dessert" etc. The twat.
(Fanta Menace Is tall enough to see over the fence, Tue 7 Aug 2007, 11:09, Reply)