ANYTHING SO LONG AS IT’S BLUE

A friend of mine once told me that she went on holiday one time with her then current boyfriend, and half way through the week, she decided that she wanted to end their relationship. So she took him to a restaurant and told him so right in the middle of the holiday that it was over. I often wonder how much fun the rest of that week turned out, but I’d still bet even that holiday ended up being more fun than one I remember.

Many, many years ago, I went on a particularly ill-advised trip to the rather beautiful Greek Island of Kos with two former friends of mine. When I look back now, I can definitely say that, generally speaking, it wasn’t the greatest week of my life and there were some moments during that week that number amongst the very worst I’ve ever had.

Now, I’ve always been a slightly nervous flyer. Not the yelling, kicking and screaming kind who have to be sedated just to get them into their seat, just the kind of slightly worried type who tends to just wonder whether climbing into an aluminium tube that’s about to head up into the skies might just be the last thing I ever choose to do. On the way out, my companions were lovely and kind and supportive and we got to where we were going on a warm and balmy night and all was well.

On the way back we could hardly exchange two words with each other, nose-dived into our various books and generally couldn’t give a rat's kidney if we crashed or not on the flight home, in fact I think in some ways we were rather hoping for a calamity, as it might seem to be something of a blessed relief. You should always be careful what you wish for, however, as we actually had a rather terrible landing after a couple of aborted approaches as we returned to our home airport and even they didn’t help us to bond again. I think we were rather hoping for something like a disaster to put us out of our misery by that point.

I sometimes wonder whether it’s only me who has experiences like this…

Perhaps it is… although, to tell the truth, and to be completely fair, it wasn’t a complete disaster.

Kos was (and probably still is) a very beautiful place to be spending some time, especially at that time of the year. Unlike where we’d flown from, the skies were blue, the seas were blue and, for a little while at least, I wasn’t feeling at all blue. Some of the days were actually quite pleasant, usually when I’d gone off on my own admittedly, and for some of the time we three travelling companions even managed to get along with each other as we saw the sights in the beautiful October sunshine.

Sadly, it was the nights that killed it…

I’m not the world’s best at enjoying “going out” and I’m starting to realise that I never was. An evening that started with what was, back in those days when I could enjoy a tipple or three, the rather happy – if wallet thumping – discovery that ordering three Jameson’s basically meant that the bar staff poured an entire bottle into three tall glasses, could very quickly turn sour when a group of local “characters” would move in on you and then could utterly dismiss you as being totally irrelevant - almost as if you weren’t even there - whilst insisting that it was they who were the “real men” to any of the people you happened to be talking to.


On another bitter night, things got so tense between me and my companions that I just had to go out for a walk because I simply couldn’t stand being in that room with them any more and ended up walking around the streets of Kos town alone for nearly six hours contemplating my lot in life and waiting for the sun to rise. At that point my “lot” didn’t seem to amount to very much and I considered whether I could feasibly spend the remaining four days of the holiday at the airport. After we finally all met up again later on that day, that actually seemed to be something of a high point, and the rest of the holiday passed by in a kind of angry (and sleepy) blur.

Still every cloud has a silver lining and there is one rather delightful moment that almost rescues the memory of that bitter week for me. Before all the nastiness and recrimination set in, the three of us headed off into town and found a nice, quiet little Cocktail bar. We went in and, full of the holiday spirit, ordered a round of exciting looking cocktails and slowly drank them whilst planning what we were going to do with our exciting week away. As we sat and chatted, without asking us, the bartender poured us another round of drinks. When we protested (slightly) that we hadn’t ordered them she said it was all right they were on the house because it was the last week of the season. “Fair enough” we thought, and started to drink them down.

As we got about half way down this latest round of drinks, the manager came into the bar and ordered “drinks all round” for all his customers. We actually tried to refuse, but he insisted because it was the last week of the season. These were very large glasses of spirits and this is where things started to get hazy and may very well be the reason that the rest of the week went so badly wrong for us.

Now, I don’t know much in life, but I do know that there is a sort of “bar-room etiquette” to be considered in these circumstances, so we couldn’t just leave. You don’t buy one drink and get given two more and then just up and go. That simply is not the done thing at all. My, that man was one heck of a Bar Manager, and quite possibly a fair Psychologist too. More drinks were ordered and I seem to remember feeling very contented…

I only remember one more thing from that evening, leaning against the bar as we put another order in and saying, possibly rather too loudly:

“I’ll have anything just so long as it’s blue.”

I’m sure there was a point to this story, but, like much of the rest of that evening, I’ve forgotten what it was…