Holidays

The twins have gone off for the day so there’s not much ‘action’ to speak of. I didn’t venture to ask where they were going. I prefer not to know. All I can assume is that tourists in some Welsh hotspot are suffering the ‘hokey cokey blues’ today. Our thoughts should be with them.

To be honest, I welcome the break. After yesterday’s outbreak of birdy flu, we all came home and enjoyed a quiet dinner. I say ‘quiet’ but the reality was much louder than that. Glasses were shattered, headaches induced, and neighbours annoyed to the point of threats. But it does bring me nicely onto the subject of today’s post. I’ve decided to talk about my holiday plans for this year.

The Chipster doesn’t ‘do’ holidays. In fact, you could say that I rarely get beyond Bangor unless it’s work related and involves getting naked for notes of a large denomination. You might remember that I went to America earlier this year, but my experiences there should give you a good indication of why I don’t go chasing the sun. I’m also extremely careful about my skin. Though I might not be as tanned as other thonglateers, I proud to say that I have better complexion down below which is where it counts in my line of business. There’s nothing worse than a stripper with a wrinkled kneecap.

This year, I’ve been giving serious thought to spending a few days down at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival. To begin with: it’s in Wales, so I wouldn’t need any extra booster shots before going and there’d be no problems with my trying to understand foreign laws relating to the wearing of thongs in public. They’d take me as I am and there’d me no words said about it. Secondly, I might also find an agent or publisher willing to take a gamble on a man light in the loins and heavy in his verbiage.

However, I’m a bit dubious about the whole ‘literary’ scene. These bookish types don’t strike me as being my kind of people and they might not take a man and his thong seriously. My last week, when not working around birdy flu, has been spent going over the draft to Big Chip Dale’s first novel. I thought it time to see what damage I’d done to the English language, but I only got half-way before desperation set it. I just don’t know if I have it in me to get to the end of all 96,000 words. The fact that it makes me smile amounts to nothing when it comes to asking the opinion of people who judge things by themes, narratives, and depressing endings involving lakes, little girls, and a dog called ‘Scamp’.

Perhaps I’m just not confident enough to be a real writer. I look good up on stage and can handle any situation that arises. But sit me down in front of a typewriter and I become a bag of undiluted worry. Many are the times I’ve had to deal with overexcited grandmothers wanting to wipe down my sweaty buttocks with their soiled underwear, but ask me to defend my use of a semi-colon and I go to pieces.

So, if it’s not the Hay festival, it’s probably Romania for the Chipster… Romania…

Gabby wants me to go visit her family and the time’s approaching when I’ll have to admit that I’d prefer to not travel into Eastern Europe. My dislike of holidays began when I was part of a cultural exchange programme a few years ago. The Iron Curtain may have come down but male stripping didn’t go down too well with those ex-KGB types. I was warned never to return and since then I’ve vowed never to travel anywhere in the old Soviet Union. I don’t know if Romania still have me on their books but I’m not willing to risk it.

So, this is how I’m spending my afternoon. Making holiday plans and getting nowhere.

Which, when I think about it, might be as good a holiday destination as any…