(no subject)
Just under three weeks from now, give or take an hour, there's a good chance I'll be outdoors, naked and unconscious. I'll be in Tunisia on holiday and, since the daytime temperature will have nudged above 20 degrees and the sun will have spent it's day lazily traversing the sky and burning down on my Viking skin, I'll most probably have sunburn. I won't, however, have the all-over, salmon-pink flesh, flakes of skin all-over the bedroom floor, Skinless-Julia-from-Hellraiser-III form of sunburn- I'm told old and experienced with the factor 50 for that to happen.
No, I'll have protected myself throughly by covering whatever flesh I've exposed (which won't be much- I only recently purchased my first ever pair of non-swimming shorts) when sat by the pool listening to Rodrigo y Gabriella with a Simon Schama and some bizarre North African cocktail. I will be covered in so much sunblock that I'll look like as white as the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man man getting some R+R but somewhere on my body there'll be a couple of tiny slivers of flesh that will have escaped my attention. Usually it's just next to my watch, or just behind the ears or, worst of all, a fold behind the knees which slips through the net and lets the sun's rays set about crisping up for hours and which I don't notice till I attempt to sleep that night. The only way to get any relief when this happens will be to sleep outside on the blacony, where it'll hopefully be cool, and naked as a newborn so that no clothing touches the affected areas. In short, it won't be pretty, it'll be borderline illegal, and I'll be paying a few hundred quid for the privilige.
Before I even get to this dignity-stripping kip though I'll have had to deal with Manchester Airport on an Easter Sunday. At half five in the morning. Whilst this will mean it'll be quieter it also means I'll have had about 45 minutes sleep and be somewhere between hungover and still inebriated from the Easter festivities. Standing in the check-in queue, barely able to stand, focus or blink-in-unison, I'm pretty sure Amy will be thoroughly cheesed off and eyeing me up for how many camels she can sell me for when we get to our destination.
Assuming she decides against it and we make it to the resort on speaking terms (unlikely seeing as the only way I can deal with the boredom of an aircraft involves travel-sickness pills and whiskey) we'll have arrived just in time for lunch where I fully intend to continue on my quest to eat one of every animal on Earth. The target for Tunisia is goat, a local delicacy apparently and usually served in a curry with cous-cous. I assume, this being Africa and all, that the curry will contain enough spice to power Denmark and I'll spend the rest of the first day of the holiday running back and forth to the toilet in-between getting localised sun-burn and sleeping off a day's beer, burning and bowel-evacuation in the au-naturel, al-fresco way detailled above.
With a bit of luck, by day two, I won't have been arrested for public nudity, the sun-burn will have died down and I'll be three stone lighter from the previous day's curry aftermath. This will be good news as I can then get down to the serious business of enjoying myself. Mostly, as with any holiday, this will comprise relaxing, wandering round wherever's local, trying out a variety of regional delicacies and drinks and trying on lots of hats. It'll be fantastic. Whenever I get the business of the airport and the first day's acclimatising out of the way, I am seriously good at holidays.
There is, however, a danger that I may spend all my time lying on the bed in the room doing absolutely nothing. If you've ever been abroad, you'll recognise the danger I'm talking about. It'll have tried to draw you in before. You'll have been struck dumb by it's gaudiness. Mesmerised by it's baffling output. Terrified by it's colours and shapes. If you've ever visited foreign climes you will, at some point, have been transfixed by foreign television.
It. Is. Insane.
Sometimes, as in the Czech Republic, it's made up of indecipherable variety shows and ancient football re-runs and isn't too diverting after a couple of days. On other occasions, as in France, it's got all the gloss and production values of British television but something's not quite right. It might be the fact that the female newscasters are the most beautiful people on Earth or it might be the that in all the drama or comedy nothing ever seems to happen- no matter how mad-cap the premise. I swear I saw a sit-com once over there that was as if Harold Pinter had written 'Ratatouille'.
However, if you're really unlucky, the TV will be like Poland and you'll never want to leave the hotel bedroom ever again. Obviously, in this part of the world, they're sick of their historical national cycle of popping in and out of existence, interpsperced by being invaded by everybody else, and have instead decided to subdue the masses and any potential insurgents with hour after hour of cheap, mental television. There's the indecipherable variety shows of the nearby Czechs except the Poles fill them with transvestites singing bizarre swing/thrash-metal hybrids and circus acts featuring both clowns and eagles. The news that follows is filmed from a broom cupboard, the weathermaps are drawn by a six-year-old and the station idents have clearly been knocked up on a Commodore 64- it is quite simply impossible to look away from. At some point, a hidden camera show will turn up which inevitably features young women having their clothes fall off near unsuspecting commuters/restaurant diners/priests and very little else. The variety of premises under which they can make this happen suggest Benny Hill simply wasn't trying hard enough.
Then, without warning, at about midnight, all normal programming is replaced by hard-core pornography which is about as erotic as sandpaper and so graphic it's more reminiscent of a More4 documentary than onanistic entertainment. Each vignette (actually, they're more 'tone pieces') lasts only 10 minutes so it's still addictive in the way that The Box or MTV Hits- although rather than waiting through whatever's on in the hope that a good tune will be next, you're waiting for some good-old fashioned three-way girl-on-girl-on-girl naked pillow-fighting in a shower. Instead, you'll get something about as sexy as 'Triumph of the Will' featuring a man with back-hair and a woman with the muscle tone of Geoff Capes.
Since Tunisia's an Islamic nation, it's unlikely to feature much programming of the Polish ilk so I might actually get out and about and see some of what is, I'm reliably informed, a beautiful country. They are, however, not big on public nudity so I just have to hope that I can keep the sunburn at bay or no-one spots me taking some nocturnal relief on the balcony. Mind you, whilst I may be arrested for being 'conkers-out' I can at least tell my captors that I wasn't doing it for any sort of sexual thrill. If they've been on holiday to Poland, they'll understand.
No, I'll have protected myself throughly by covering whatever flesh I've exposed (which won't be much- I only recently purchased my first ever pair of non-swimming shorts) when sat by the pool listening to Rodrigo y Gabriella with a Simon Schama and some bizarre North African cocktail. I will be covered in so much sunblock that I'll look like as white as the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man man getting some R+R but somewhere on my body there'll be a couple of tiny slivers of flesh that will have escaped my attention. Usually it's just next to my watch, or just behind the ears or, worst of all, a fold behind the knees which slips through the net and lets the sun's rays set about crisping up for hours and which I don't notice till I attempt to sleep that night. The only way to get any relief when this happens will be to sleep outside on the blacony, where it'll hopefully be cool, and naked as a newborn so that no clothing touches the affected areas. In short, it won't be pretty, it'll be borderline illegal, and I'll be paying a few hundred quid for the privilige.
Before I even get to this dignity-stripping kip though I'll have had to deal with Manchester Airport on an Easter Sunday. At half five in the morning. Whilst this will mean it'll be quieter it also means I'll have had about 45 minutes sleep and be somewhere between hungover and still inebriated from the Easter festivities. Standing in the check-in queue, barely able to stand, focus or blink-in-unison, I'm pretty sure Amy will be thoroughly cheesed off and eyeing me up for how many camels she can sell me for when we get to our destination.
Assuming she decides against it and we make it to the resort on speaking terms (unlikely seeing as the only way I can deal with the boredom of an aircraft involves travel-sickness pills and whiskey) we'll have arrived just in time for lunch where I fully intend to continue on my quest to eat one of every animal on Earth. The target for Tunisia is goat, a local delicacy apparently and usually served in a curry with cous-cous. I assume, this being Africa and all, that the curry will contain enough spice to power Denmark and I'll spend the rest of the first day of the holiday running back and forth to the toilet in-between getting localised sun-burn and sleeping off a day's beer, burning and bowel-evacuation in the au-naturel, al-fresco way detailled above.
With a bit of luck, by day two, I won't have been arrested for public nudity, the sun-burn will have died down and I'll be three stone lighter from the previous day's curry aftermath. This will be good news as I can then get down to the serious business of enjoying myself. Mostly, as with any holiday, this will comprise relaxing, wandering round wherever's local, trying out a variety of regional delicacies and drinks and trying on lots of hats. It'll be fantastic. Whenever I get the business of the airport and the first day's acclimatising out of the way, I am seriously good at holidays.
There is, however, a danger that I may spend all my time lying on the bed in the room doing absolutely nothing. If you've ever been abroad, you'll recognise the danger I'm talking about. It'll have tried to draw you in before. You'll have been struck dumb by it's gaudiness. Mesmerised by it's baffling output. Terrified by it's colours and shapes. If you've ever visited foreign climes you will, at some point, have been transfixed by foreign television.
It. Is. Insane.
Sometimes, as in the Czech Republic, it's made up of indecipherable variety shows and ancient football re-runs and isn't too diverting after a couple of days. On other occasions, as in France, it's got all the gloss and production values of British television but something's not quite right. It might be the fact that the female newscasters are the most beautiful people on Earth or it might be the that in all the drama or comedy nothing ever seems to happen- no matter how mad-cap the premise. I swear I saw a sit-com once over there that was as if Harold Pinter had written 'Ratatouille'.
However, if you're really unlucky, the TV will be like Poland and you'll never want to leave the hotel bedroom ever again. Obviously, in this part of the world, they're sick of their historical national cycle of popping in and out of existence, interpsperced by being invaded by everybody else, and have instead decided to subdue the masses and any potential insurgents with hour after hour of cheap, mental television. There's the indecipherable variety shows of the nearby Czechs except the Poles fill them with transvestites singing bizarre swing/thrash-metal hybrids and circus acts featuring both clowns and eagles. The news that follows is filmed from a broom cupboard, the weathermaps are drawn by a six-year-old and the station idents have clearly been knocked up on a Commodore 64- it is quite simply impossible to look away from. At some point, a hidden camera show will turn up which inevitably features young women having their clothes fall off near unsuspecting commuters/restaurant diners/priests and very little else. The variety of premises under which they can make this happen suggest Benny Hill simply wasn't trying hard enough.
Then, without warning, at about midnight, all normal programming is replaced by hard-core pornography which is about as erotic as sandpaper and so graphic it's more reminiscent of a More4 documentary than onanistic entertainment. Each vignette (actually, they're more 'tone pieces') lasts only 10 minutes so it's still addictive in the way that The Box or MTV Hits- although rather than waiting through whatever's on in the hope that a good tune will be next, you're waiting for some good-old fashioned three-way girl-on-girl-on-girl naked pillow-fighting in a shower. Instead, you'll get something about as sexy as 'Triumph of the Will' featuring a man with back-hair and a woman with the muscle tone of Geoff Capes.
Since Tunisia's an Islamic nation, it's unlikely to feature much programming of the Polish ilk so I might actually get out and about and see some of what is, I'm reliably informed, a beautiful country. They are, however, not big on public nudity so I just have to hope that I can keep the sunburn at bay or no-one spots me taking some nocturnal relief on the balcony. Mind you, whilst I may be arrested for being 'conkers-out' I can at least tell my captors that I wasn't doing it for any sort of sexual thrill. If they've been on holiday to Poland, they'll understand.