Monday, October 22, 2007

Unwanted Destinations

It is inevitable that on any holiday you will find yourself in places you really don't want to be. I'm not talking about the Czech town apparently populated entirely by prostitutes and unhelpful train ticket collectors in which you find yourself stuck for three hours while waiting for a train, nor even the dodgy Argentinean internet cafe which welcomes you with the sight of a small child pissing in the doorway, so much as I'm talking about...

Shitting-your-Pants-Ville
You will realise you have entered this small, hopefully rarely-visited, locale when the possibility occurs to you that you might actually be about to die. This could happen, for instance, when you discover, while thousands of feet up in the air, that the air hostess demonstrating the safety procedures is very, very drunk. Concerns will be further raised by the sporadic ramblings of a madman that come over the PA at unpredictable intervals, offering contradictory advice or suggestions before falling back into silence mid sentence. If you don't know where you are by now try turning on the overhead light, listening to the radio or accessing the long promised but never received in-flight entertainment. You observe not only your light but that of your neighbour's flicker once and die while your radio is either non existent or offers only silence? Congratulations... you're in Shitting-Your-Pants-Ville.

Aw Fuck County
Aw Fuck County is always open for a quick stay, such as when you realise you are a day late not only for the flight you have just arrived to catch but for all subsequent connectingflights, or for a longer trip, such as when you discover your boyfriend has left his wallet in a plan somewhere between Washington DC and Argentina.

Ugly America
Ugly America is not, as you might suppose, a place populated by fat tourists with Texan accents who talk as though nobody around them could possibly understand them and whose 'Spanish' consists of speaking in an increasingly loud voice (apologies to MrHatch senior). Ugly America is when you discover that YOU are being viewed as the equivalent of the fatties with Texan accents. This may happen as you try desperately to speak bad Italian to a hostel clerk and, upon receiving his blank stare, complain "oh come on, they're practically the same language" or it may happen when, aftera highly confusing verbal exchange, your taxi driver turns to you and says "so you're American, right?"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh thank god! a post from Kateville! I had almost given you up for dead - apart from the emails of course. Please provide me with the necc armour to fuck the biath who screwed your story. I'm off to pla lawn bowls tomorrow - long story. Not as good as yours, but...

L x

shiny said...

I think you should also apologise to people with Texan accents. Many of whom are lovely. Especially when they say they're "fixin' to go" somewhere. That just "kills me" as Holden Caulfield would say. Who wasn't, as I recall, from Texas. But that's not the point.

Hope you're having fun xx