Daniel Storer
BEDTIME STORERS
‘Holiday sex plays havoc with sexual health’ trumpeted the headline in last month’s PN. The story was about how one in eight cases of STIs in the UK are due to sex abroad. It instantly brought to mind the many delightful hours I have misspent on bargain basement, end-of-season holidays. But it mainly made me think how cheapo holidays can give you so much more than the odd STI.
Of course, there was a time when I did the holidays of the rich and famous; a private beach in Eluthera and Byron Bay for the millennium. But that was many moons ago when I was happily married to my Mr Big. He is long gone and so are the five star holidays. But as luxurious as they were, my best and most vivid memories come from times spent on the Greek Island of Mykonos, with my unemployed coffee-table-dancer-est-friend.
On one occasion, during a night on the town, we argued and got split up. I made my way to a nightclub expecting her to show up later - once she had seen the error of her ways. But while walking along a cobbled street desperately shouting my name, my friend fell down some steps, snapped her Cha Cha heels and knocked herself unconscious.
She came round to find herself surrounded by half naked men offering to mend her shoe with gaffa tape. It turns out she had stumbled, so to speak, on the island’s cruising area. The guys mended her shoes and escorted her to the club, complete with an unsightly gash (in her leg) and blood running down her face. She has a funny way of getting gay men to do things like that for her. Little tramp.
Another time I was found in just my pants, unconscious on the edge of a cliff with cuts, bruises and splinters everywhere (don’t ask). An elderly Dutch couple took pity on me and drove me back to my apartment. But my dancer friend was too busy making whoopee with some young stud to open the door and tend to poor old me. The Dutch lady told me to check to see if I had been raped by putting my hands down my pants and sniffing for forced entry. The couple came back twice the same day after finding my jeans blowing in the trees and my t-shirt on a road six miles away. To this day it’s a mystery what happened.
In Corfu (don’t go, it’s a dump) I smashed my head after diving into a pool. I performed the dive with such grace and alcohol-induced gusto that I glided through the water like a dolphin and, not knowing how to stop, crashed into the wall at the at the other end My mouth streamed with blood and the owner had to rip up the pool overflow and retrieve the cap that had flown from my mouth. I was bundled into a taxi with a rather attractive driver and taken to the only dentist on the island. Suffice to say, having no cash, I paid in kind (I am that tooth fairy) and the cap has never fallen from my mouth since.
By the time you read this I will have returned from my annual holidays - this time in Gran Canaria. Hopefully, if it goes to plan, I will return with enough stories, memories and duty free to keep me going until the next one.
I say thank heavens for bottom-of-the-bucket holidays. They give me so many adventures; some pleasurable, some devastating, some downright unprintable. And I still go back for more. Without them there would be no sordid tales born of too much sun, sangria, STIs and waiters called Spiros. So, you can keep your pyramids and your great walls of China. Give me a bungalow in Benidorm any day; even if the latter is more likely to give you an experience you can culture rather than the other way round.
dannydoodle74@hotmail.com
