Grumpy
I'm standing in an unnecessary queue at reception in a nice hotel in Lisbon. I'm allowed to be in a nice hotel in Lisbon because I've just spent a week dancing in the dust at Boom in Portugal, living out of a tent. I deserve a little luxury hit. The queue is unnecessary because the people in front of me are treating the information guy like a tour booking agent, which he more-or-less is. They have a facility to book tickets for you, but she's settled right in and is asking him all sorts of stuff that she should already know. Surely in these situations you already know where you want to go, and you book the tickets. Me, I just want 30 seconds of his time to get my password for wifi connection. But she's all elbows-on-the-counter while asking for his opinion on where he thinks they should go. Dad is gazing with lust at the hotel bar while Teen Boy looks very much like he's trying really hard to be invisible.
“Okay,” Mum says in the most annoying of Brit accents, “so we'll book a day tour for Sintra and the coast on Friday, another day tour on Saturday... that leaves Friday night free. What do you suggest we do on Friday night?”
Info Guy looks a little exasperated. “Well what do you want to do on Friday night?”
“Do you have restaurants and bars and things in the area? Not too far away because we'll get lost if we go more than five minutes away. Is there a show nearby that you can recommend?”
Dad pulls out of his bar-lust for a few agitated moments. “Darling, do we really want to do so much. Won't we be exhausted? Don't we want some time to just relax and take in all that we've seen?”
What he's really saying is can't we have some time to just sit in the bar and drink beer, like back home?
Invisible boy remains invisible, probably daydreaming about whatever game it is he uses to block out his awful reality... probably a game involving shooting family members with high powered weaponry.
In the end Mum hands over a huge wad of Euro for their day trips. Especially when you do the conversion to Australian dollars, it's a silly amount of money. Especially especially as I've just come from Sintra on the train for a two Euro. I spent a whole day wandering around the main attractions of the Moorish Castle, Pena Palace and Quinta da Regaleira. You could spend the best part of a day in each and there are plenty more. And the coast of Sintra as part of a day trip? You must be shitting me.
As for any bars or restaurants in the area... did these people run blind-folded from their taxi straight into the hotel? There are massive plazas of bars and restaurants just outside the hotel door. And if you walk a block or two away, you'll enjoy top quality food at half the price in authentic, friendly restaurants.
I feel sorry for timid travellers. Sure, these clowns can go back home and talk of all the wonderful sites they saw, but a quick glance is just missing out. Toughen up. Check out the public transport system and use it. Stay in a place. For the hundreds of Euro she was paying for these day trips, the family could have been in Sintra in less than an hour, stayed the day or two it really takes to experience it, then bussed it to the coast and stayed there at a couple of beaches for a couple of days. And time constraints be buggered; they have more days in Lisbon. I know because I've been listening to them for almost 20 minutes now.
And I've just designed a new game that involves timid travellers who get in the way of my wifi being blown to pieces by high powered weaponry.
Lee Bemrose is Grumpy with timid travellers. He's a freelance writer, leebemrose@hotmail.com
Grumpy
From time to time the question of kids comes up. “Grumpy,” people will say to me, “do you think you'll ever have kids?” The answer is an unequivocal no. NO. Nononononono. Nope. Absolutely not. No way. Not ever. No. Fortunately Mrs Grumpy (aka The Dreaded One) feels the same way.
Sometimes, if my interrogator is particularly stupid, they might assure me in a sagacious tone that one day I will change my mind. If they say this, it's probably a safe bet they they themselves have recently become a breeder. Suddenly they have access to the true meaning of life. They have been enlightened, and I am merely yet to see the light. Not all breeders are so annoyingly sanctimonious; many react with an each-to-their-own shrug. Non-breeders with procreation on their life-timetable might ask why no Little Grumpies are on the horizon, and my reasons have nothing to do with overpopulation and the relentless and ruthless destruction humans are wreaking upon an otherwise paradisiacal planet. No, it's not that.
Recently at a family get-together. The adults are catching up on what's been going on in each others lives while the kids (lets call them Domestic Terrorist 1 and Domestic Terrorist 2) occupy themselves as they see fit. Basically this involves pulling stuff from out of cupboards and converting apparently harmless objects into potentially lethal missiles whilst hijacking the adult conversation by remote control and holding it hostage until their demands are met.
Mum and Dad's sentences become slightly surreal: “So how have you been? Are you still working at what are you doing with that? PutthatdownIsaidputdownrightnow that place you were working at? How is Mummy said no! What did Mummy say? No that going for you?”
DT 1 tells me, “Uncle Grumpy, I play golf,” and I appreciate the heads-up because a split second later a hard plastic ball zings past my head and ricochets off three walls before rolling under the couch. No relief, however, as he has an arsenal of hard plastic balls which keep us on our toes as they fly about unpredictably, whizzing through the air and conking off walls and furniture.
Meanwhile, DT 2 has been sating her voracious appetite for chips. I watch in fascination as fistful after fistful of chips are pushed into her mouth until eventually the entire family sized box has been consumed. She eyes me levelly as she methodically makes her way through the box, like she's thinking, “Yeah, I know, you wanted some of this didn't you, wanted it badly, but you ain't getting' none of it.” I look at the brie and am about to make a move for it when DT 1 moves in. He gouges a fistful of the cheese out and packs it down into a satisfying slab on a water cracker and suddenly the gouge marks render the cheese just that little less appetising.
Sometimes the chaos and carnage dies down a little, but the silence only arouses suspicion, the alarm goes up and conversation is interrupted again as search parties scatter in all directions: “Where are you? What are you doing? Whatever you're doing you'd better stop it at once!”
At one point DT 2, having run out of chips to put into her mouth, pops one of the blue golf balls into her mouth. Her mouth is so tiny and petite that she can't close her lips over the ball completely. She pops the ball back out. This has amused her so she pops the ball back in like she's one of those carnival clown games. The ball pops back out with a little more force and her shoulders shudder this time. A faint look of confusion and fear flashes across her pretty features as she gags again, and suddenly she is Reagan and we're in the vomit scene from The Exorcist. The family-sized packet of chips makes a reappearance (probably as astonished to see us again as we are to see it) and lands mostly on the mother who appears disgusted and resigned in equal parts. The father whisks DT 2 off to the bathroom (later to emerge stating, “Great. Bonus points – I get to change her nappy too.”) while the mother sits with cupped hands of vomit and trying to figure out what to do next.
What's that? Am I ever going to have kids? Um – no. Nononono.
Grumpy is Lee Bemrose, freelance writer, twobluefish@bigpond.com
I could post my recent interview with Bad Seed violinist Warren Ellis, but instead I'll present you with my in depth analysis of the talents of Lily Allen, as published in the current issue of Tsunami. Me high-brow? Oh yeah.
