Bummer Holiday

We spent the afternoon with Ted and Beryl. They had an awful time on their holiday. The hotel (in Bournemouth) had taken in a late group booking from Gamblers Anonymous which filled their top three floors, so Ted and Beryl and two other couples got shunted to a smaller place further down the seafront. That place was run by a woman whose husband had recently left her for a pole-dancer, and she was struggling to cope and kept bursting into tears. On their second day there they went on a bus trip, and the bus broke down spectacularly, causing a huge blockage on a main road, and filling the bus itself with exhaust fumes. Later in the week, Ted fell into a bunker playing golf and twisted his ankle, and Beryl lost her glasses in a bingo hall. She is convinced she missed out on ten thousand pounds because “I thought I was waiting for a number 6, but then someone pointed out it was the number 8, and I’m sure that had been called already.“ All in all, a very disappointing way to spend your first holiday in over a decade.
Or so you would think…..
But in true Beryl style, she smiled through it all and told me “It was nice to be away. And it means so much that Teddy put the effort in to organise it.”
I’d never heard her call him Teddy before, and he actually blushed a bit when she said it.
They really are a lovely old couple. I look at them and I feel inspired about relationships. I look at them and I think “If me and Philippa can end up half as happy as those two, then we’re going to have a wonderful future together”.

RC 29-8-11