SHOES - a story in a hundred words.

SHOES

We hadn’t bought a map, preferring always just to explore, so we simply wandered through the town. Most of the narrow streets were busy with locals carrying shopping, calling to each other from balconies, or sunning themselves on the pavement – the kind of scene we’d hoped to discover when booking our holiday.

But one district was eerily quiet. Outside several doors lay a pair of child’s shoes, faded and filled with cobwebs.

In a cafė we asked about them. The owner crossed herself.  “Years ago the earthquake destroyed a school – some parents still wait.”

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How could I write about anything else this week when any parent's nightmare has been brought to life on our television screens? Thanks to Sarah Potter for the photo prompt and to https://rochellewisoff.com/ for hosting Friday Fictioneers.

I have been absent from FF for two weeks, visiting family in Canada, and last week's photo reminds me vividly of my son's father-in-law's delicious home-made bread, every slice of which had a hole formed by the machinery of his bread-maker!  

AN EXPAT'S LAMENT - A POEM

I'M A WINNER!  A forum to which I belong had a competition in July to write a poem on the theme of HOLIDAY. I won with this poem, written in memory of our many years in Tenerife. I should add that all of our visitors were welcome, and that this is tongue-in-cheek - honest!

IT’S NO HOLIDAY FOR US – an expat’s lament

We have so many visitors

we have to take bookings.

They bring bottles of duty-free

to an island where booze is cheap,

and a pound of mild Cheddar

when we requested strong.

For a week they eat our food,

use our electricity,

and leave hair in the shower.

‘Your life is one long holiday,’

they say,

‘It’s all right for some,’

as we drive to the beauty spots

for the hundredth time.

Then they buy us a meal,

and we leave them at the airport,

before going home to sweep sand off the floors

and wash their sheets ready for the next lot.

SANDCASTLE - flash fiction in 100 words

SANDCASTLE

Kate and Robert stared in dismay at the weather-stained house. It wasn’t the luxurious holiday home of the photographs, but the website had promised unlimited wine, so they ventured inside.

The gate clanged shut like prison doors and the interior was gloomy as a dungeon. Light-bulbs flickered, electric points sparked, and the bed was damp. When they couldn’t even open the cellar door they left to find a hotel.

Unseen, the caretaker watched their departure from a cellar window. The absentee owners hadn’t paid her for years – she wasn’t about to share their vintage wine with any putains Anglais. 

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I had to resort to a dictionary this week, as 16 years of learning and speaking Spanish has buried most of my French!  Thank you to ce.ayr for the photograph and to Rochelle for hosting Friday Fictioneers' Flash Fiction each week on her blog  https://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/

An odd thing I have noticed this week - after at least a year of boasting 103 followers - mainly due, I fear, to the A-Z Challenge which I entered for three years - my numbers have suddenly dropped to 95. Should I take this personally or are people simply indulging in an early Spring Clean?

Whatever the reason, thank you for being one of the remaining few. Please leave a comment to let me know you've visited. And no, I will not be entering the A-Z Challenge this year, but I wish the thousands who do the very best of luck.

HOLIDAY-MAKERS & HAZARDS

HOW was your weekend? We had rain! Wonderful, life-giving, crop-saving rain after a year of drought. I did spare a thought for the visitors who thought they were escaping bad weather, but then it didn’t rain everywhere, or constantly, and it was warm rain.

HAVE you ever wondered what item is most often left at HOME by HOLIDAY-MAKERS? Passport? Essential medicines? HAIR-DRYER? Nope – what they usually forget to bring along is HALF AN OUNCE of common-sense.

I HAVE waited for my own visitors in Airport Arrivals often enough to be able to distinguish between the two-week-tourist and the returning resident – the tourists are HAULING the biggest suitcases. When you see them going home a fortnight later, burnt a painful red and peeling like gum-trees in autumn, you can tell that the women spent their entire holiday in bikinis or strappy dresses, and the men never wore shirts. So why did they HUMP along 20 kilos of luggage each?

HEALTH INSURANCE is something else they don’t think about. Accidents do HAPPEN, and even if they’re not fit to fly home, they can’t stay in their HOTEL room – it’s been let to someone else. HOW will they pay for their extended stay? And who pays the HOSPITAL bills?

HAZARDOUS sports are another thing. People who wouldn’t dream of HANG-GLIDING over the gently rolling HILLS of Sussex leap HEEDLESSLY off the precipitous cliff-faces of Tenerife. I have watched, HEART in mouth, from a roof-top in Arona while a HELICOPTER searched for a glider who had misjudged the wind.

Then there were the two young men who HIRED a HARLEY and rode off on this powerful motorbike to explore while their girl-friends shopped. When the boys failed to appear that night a search was started, but it took two days to find them. The bike had left the road and fallen into a barranco. It ploughed a path through some shrubs which closed behind it, HIDING the young men. Two days, lying badly injured and without water, in this climate – they didn’t stand a chance.

And to add to this warning – the local papers are reporting that such foolhardiness is going to be costly – anyone who undertakes a dangerous sport without due precautions is going to have to pay for being rescued.

HALF-ARSED PARENTING

My daughter and son-in-law both work in the tourist industry. HE is a resort manager, and has so many HAIR-RAISING tales that they deserve their own book – maybe he’ll write it after he’s retired! She is a sun-care advisor and visits hotels on a rota, giving a brief chat by the pools and selling Aloe Vera products. One day the pool guy brought her a screaming toddler and she used her microphone to ask for its parents. No response, so Reception checked passports and located the room. The door was wide open, Security found the child’s dummy which quietened it down, but no-one was there. TWO HOURS LATER the parents came back. They’d left their baby asleep in the hotel room and GONE SHOPPING. Beggars belief, doesn’t it?

HURSTPIERPOINT is the village in West Sussex where we used to live, and where many of my family still do. When I win the lottery I am going back there to be a round-the-corner Nan!