Fiona Dunkin
Staff Writer
These blustery, damp October days are making our parting with the summer months all the more traumatic. College deadlines, 9 a.m. lectures, and days spent holed up in the library feel as though they have never left. The yearning for next summer has already begun. Yes, perhaps one of the very few times when our lives manage to peep outside the margins of monotony is whilst on holidays. It is the one occasion on which every kind of unfathomably odd/coincidental occurrence is positively guaranteed to take place. Why do these kind of things never happen on home-ground? Maybe, just maybe, if we just feigned the nationality of the country of our stay we could somehow escape this volatile holiday inevitability. I have attempted this numerous times, but never to any avail. Attempts failed yet again this summer during a five-day trip to Biarritz with a couple of pals from college.
It all started at the airport. The airport, as we all know, can be equally the most stressful and exciting aspect of holidaying. We breezed through security, lazed around after devouring the obligatory full Irish breakfast (which before leaving the house you swear to yourself you won’t be “hungry enough” for) , before vaguely recollecting the fact that we had a flight to catch. No worries, plenty of time yet. We get to the departure gate, passport-check, boarding pass-check. Handluggage-cheee….. ck? “You vill haff to place your shopping in your bag”, barked the Nazi-like lady at the desk. Fine. Except now it doesn’t fit in that awful contraption that your luggage must fit “comfortably” into. Well, even after a quick decision to ignore the “comfortable” part, there was no way my suitcase was going to squeeze its way though. “It vill have to go in the hold”, her words slicing through the air with the same voracity as her eyes piercing through my skull. “But….but do I have to pay?!”, I spluttered, adopting my best “pity me” face. “No”, she replied, her lips curling into a half-smile, “I have some velly nice friends who have left me with no change…so I cannot make you pay”. I half-expected her to add something like, “But I vill make you pay later….”. But no, that was it. “You can take your purse, however”. Purse clutched in my hand, I ran out to the runway. It was then I remembered my passport. Another sprint back to the desk, reassured by the humanity (that I had already come to miss) of the security guy, ” Yer grrrand luv, take yer toime”. Boot it out to the runway, managing to even be beaten by a couple who had spent a few minutes too long over lunch. Not much equals the embarrassment of being last on the airplane, straw hat and sunnies in hand. The stereotype personified. Being allergic to fish, I had to carry a very large adrenalin injection on board. I decided it best to conceal it under a magazine for the duration of the flight fear of being hauled off the plane.
Other incidents included being mistaken for a Japanese person in the unisex toilets of a Biarritz nightclub. The old man tilted his head, bemusedly scrutinising my features, before venturing, “Japonaise?”. My carefully weighed response of : “Eh….non…Irlandaise”, was met with a knowing nod, as though his guess had been only marginally off track . A night enjoying a bottle of Sangria on the beach became a minefield of dodgy encounters, ranging from a group of lads clearly intent on taking advantage of our potential naivity as tourists. An offer of a lift to the nightclub two minutes walk away was vehemently declined. Walking away, I was accosted by a man, wine bottle twirling around his fingers to the strains of his companion’s rendering of “Redemption Song”. Impossibly cliched – the only thing missing was a beret and a baguette.
We were all quickly brought back to earth by the demand for ID in the local pub. The realisation that the legal age for the consumption of beer in France is sixteen only added to our disconcertion. What really took the biscuit, however, was the waving around of our IDs by the barman, him chanting, “VINGT ET UN! VINGT ET UN!”. Unabashed by any sense of diplomacy, the entire company of the pub whipped around to face us . Tact, and likewise, petite small year olds, do not exist in France.
It goes without saying that Iceland decided to erupt again nearing the end of our trip. Devouring ice-creams one afternoon, a phone flashed with the message, “Hope you can get home with the ash-cloud love. Talk to you soon, Mum”. Fantastic! Our three years of Trinity French provided zero benefit while frantically trying to decipher the 9 o’clock news later. In the end, we just about got “cloudy” and “dusty”. Damn Iceland.
If something out of the ordinary hasn’t occurred by the time you reach customs the next time you’re away, suspicions should be raised. The longer time elapses, the worse the jolt. If nothing has happened by sundown, you’re screwed.
