|  |     
    Thanks for the reply - yes, I'd be interested in any travel info you
    can suggest, and will have a search in this conference for the
    toll-free numbers. 
    
    We'll have 2 weeks holiday after the conference.. so a bit of travel
    would still leave time to relax and explore some place(s). 
    
    My mail stop is WLC F1/3 - which is the UK Southern Logistics Centre,
    Wharfedale Road, Winnersh, Berkshire, RG41 5TR.
    
    Thanks again, 
    
    Alison   @WLC or CHEFS::CODNERA
    
    (rapidly getting spoilt for choice.. but it's a nice problem to have -
    I can't wait to get there now!)
     
 | 
|  | You know this will never happen here....
    
  Eric Idle is the Customer, and I think Michael Palin the Agent....
A: Ah Hello, I'm Bounder of Adventure.
C: Hello, my names Smoketoomuch.
A: What?
C: My names Smoketoomuch, Mr. Smoketoomuch.
A: Well <humouredly> you'd better cut down a little then.
<pause>
C: I'm sorry?
A: You'd better cut down a little then.
<pause>
C: Oh I see, Smoketoomuch so I'd better cut down a little then.
A: Yes <laughing> I expect you get people making jokes about
   your name all the time.
C: No actually. It never struck me before. Smoketoomuch. Tahaha 
   heh heh.
A: Anyway, you're interested in one of our holidays are you?
C: Yes that's right, I saw your advert in the bolour supplement.
A: The what?
C: The bolour supplement.
A: The colour supplement?
C: Yes that's right. I'm afraid I cant say the letter B
A: C?
C: Yes. Its all due to a trauma I suffered when I was a 
   Sboolboy. I was attacked by a bat.
A: Ah, a cat?
C: No a bat.
A: Well can you say the letter K?
C: Oh yes, Khaki, Kettle, Kipling, Kuwait, Kings Bollege Bambridge.
A: Well why don't you say the letter K, instead of the letter C?
C: What, you mean spell bolour with a K.
A: Right.
C: Kolour.
A: Yes.
C: Ah that's very good. I never thought of that before. What a silly
   bunt.
A: Now then, er, about the, er, about the holiday.
C: Yes well I've been on package tours many times before and so
   your advert really baught my eye.
A: Good, good, jolly good.
C: Yes, you're quite right, whats the point of going abroad if
   you're just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded
by sweaty (miners sons???) from Kettering and Boventry with their
bloth baps and their bardigans and their transistor radios
complaining about the tea, ooh they don't make it properly here
do they - and stopping at endless Majorcan bodegas selling fish
and chips and Watneys Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and
sitting in their cotton sunfrocks squirting Timothy Whites sun
cream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh cos they 
overdid it on the first day.
A: Absolutely, absolutely.
C: And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellevueses
   and Bontinentals with their International luxury roomettes
   and draught Red Barrel and swimming pools full of fat German
   businessmen pretending to be acrobats forming pyramids and
   frightening the children and barging into the queues. And if
   you're not at the table spot on 7 you miss your bowl of
   Campbells Cream of Mushroom soup - the first item on the menu
   of International cuisine.
A: Absolutely, well what we'd like....
C: And every Thursday night there's bloody cabaret in the bar,
   featuring some tiny emaciated dago with 9 inch hips, and some
   fat bloated tart with her hair Brylcreamed down and a big arse
   presenting flamenco for foreigners. And then an audio-typist
   from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhea trying
   to pick up hairy legged wop waiters called Manuel.
A: Will you be quiet!
C: And once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman remains
   where you can buy Cherryade, and melted Ice Cream and bleeding
   Watneys Red Barrel.
A: Please....
C: And one night they take you to a typical restaurant with local
   atmosphere and colour and you sit next to a party of people
   from Rhyl who keep singing "Torremolinos, Torremolinos".
A: WILL you be QUIET!.
C: And complaining about the food.. ooh its SO greasy isn't it. 
   You get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with
   an Instamatic camera and Dr Scholl sandals and last Tuesdays
   Daily Express and he drones on and on and on about how Mr Smith
   should be running this country, and how many languages
   Enoch Powell can speak and then he throws up all over the
   Cuba Libres. Then sending tiddly postcards of places they don't
   realise they haven't even visited.... to all at number 22,
   weather wonderful, food very greasy, but we have managed to
   find this tiny little place hidden away in the back streets
   where you can buy Cheese and Onion crisps and Watneys Red
   Barrel. And spending four days on the tarmac at Luton airport
   on a five day package tour with nothing to eat but dried BEA
   type sandwiches and you cant even get a glass of Watneys Red
   Barrel cos you're still in England and the bloody bar closes
   every time you're thirsty. And the kids are crying and vomiting
   and breaking the plastic ashtrays and they keep telling you
   it'll only be another hour although you know damn well your
   plane is still in Iceland and it has to come back and take
   a party of Swedes to Yugoslavia before it can come back and load
A: I can't bear IT!
C: you up at 3 am in the morning. And then you sit on the tarmac
   for four hours because of 'unforeseen difficulties', ie. the
   permanent strike of Air Traffic Control; and when you finally
   get to Malaga airport and everyone's swallowing into Vioform
   tablets and queuing for the bloody toilets and queuing for
   the bloody armed customs officers, and queuing for the bloody
   bus that isn't there waiting to take you to the hotel that
   hasn't yet been built. And when you finally get to the half-built
   Algerian ruin, called the Hotel del Sol, by paying half your
   holiday money to a licensed bandit in a taxi; there's no water
   in the pool, there's no water in the taps, there's no water in
   the bog, and there's only a bleeding lizard in the bidet!
   And half the rooms are double booked and you cant sleep anyway
   cos of the permanent 24 hour drilling of the foundations of
   the hotel next door. You play while appalling apprentice
   chemists from Ealing pretending to be hippies, and middle-class
   stockbrokers wives from Esher, busily buying identical holiday
   villas and suburban development plots just like Esher, because
   the Labour Governments got in again.
   Meanwhile the Spanish National Tourist Board......< fade out>
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