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rionaleonhart) wrote2005-09-04 06:01 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2005-09-04 06:01 pm
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(Our group in Turkey consisted of twelve people, seven of them between the ages of eleven and seventeen. Ergo: chaos. But enjoyable chaos.
For full comprehension of this post, a quick guide to the people mentioned:
Matthew is the elder of my cousins.
Patrick is the younger cousin. Fergus is Patrick's friend. Both are fifteen years old.
Fred is the younger of my brothers at eleven. Joseph is my other brother - he's fourteen, three years younger than me, but I can't call him my 'little brother' because he is freakishly tall. That's his middle name: Joseph 'Freakishly Tall' Evans. Nick is Joseph's friend.
Harriet is my real name.
Random Boat Guy is some random guy who works on a boat.)
Ah, Turkey. A holiday filled with unfortunate booking incidents:
Stupid Conning Git Of A Villa Agent: Hey, want to book a Turkish villa?
Innocent Evans Family: Okay! Have some money!
SCGOAVA: We're trying to find a replacement villa for you. Sorry about all this.
IEF: Wait, what?
SCGOAVA: Whoops, sent the wrong e-mail. Heh heh. Heh.
IEF: ...okay...
SCGOAVA: OMG SUDDENLY PROBLEM WITH BOOKING.
IEF: What? You're kidding, right?
SCGOAVA: OMG CAN'T BE SOLVED.
IEF: ...we're leaving in two days. The other family are leaving tomorrow. What the hell are we supposed to do?
My Amazing Mother: *somehow manages to book a new villa for us all in less than a day.*
SCGOAVA: OMG DON'T GO TO THE POLICE.
Enraged Evans Family: Screw you, you owe us four thousand quid. *goes to the police.*
Police: This guy? Yeah, he's a conman. The owner of the villa he was pretending to hire out sold it years ago. You'd think his name would have tipped you off. (*)
...belly-dancing:
Perhaps I went out in front of maybe thirty people with Patrick and Fergus when I hadn't even been drinking, and the three of us tried to belly-dance, failed spectacularly and made total fools of ourselves. Perhaps I did not. I am not going to tell you. You can probably guess.
...scorching heat:
Well, okay, I don't have anything to say about the scorching heat (beyond the fact that my skin is no longer so pale that I look like a walking corpse, which is a Good Thing). It was Turkey, it was hot, what did you expect? So I'll take this opportunity to praise Joseph's bargaining skills, because they really are very good indeed - he managed to bring a belt down from thirty-five lire (approximately fifteen pounds) to nine (four pounds). Also to recommend A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. And to say that listening to the trip-hop version of Theme of Laura on headphones is an incredibly strange experience, because there are some weird vibrating notes throughout - it's particularly noticeable at the end - that are specifically pitched to give you a headache. I swear. Plus the creepy echoing voices, of course.
...problems with plumbing:
Seriously, plumbing-wise it has not been a good holiday. One toilet did not flush properly. One bathroom began smelling strongly of sewage about five days in, and the door had to be kept shut for the rest of the holiday. The tap in the kitchen couldn't be switched off, and when plumbers came in to fix it they somehow managed to blow up the hot water tank (which was really rather fantastic, watching from outside - first there was a mysterious BOOM, then a rushing noise, then steam began billowing out of the roof, and then dirty water cascaded out of the side of the villa. It was oddly hilarious). Two nights before we left, the spa bath began to roar in a most unsettling manner and to leak scalding water all over the bathroom floor. Amazing stuff. This villa is a walking disaster, or would be if it could walk.
...creepy waiters:
Look, I'm sure that there are plenty of perfectly nice Turkish men who are not creepy at all. I'm certain of it. The problem is that I didn't seem to meet any of them.
So, uh, if a waiter never strokes my arm, plays with my hair, rubs my back, calls me 'darling' (Joseph tried calling the waiter who did this incessantly 'darling' and got called a 'gay boy' in return), leans uncomfortably close to me, grabs my hand or wrist and attempts to pull me out of my seat and into a conga line that I clearly do not want to join, or puts an arm around my waist again, I will be a happy woman. While we're on the subject, this also applies to workers on boats who do the following:
Random Boat Guy: Hey, lady! (reading from a phrasebook) You can sit here. *points to the bench on which Harriet is sitting.*
Harriet: I'm sorry?
RBG: You can sit here.
Harriet: ...thank you?
RBG: *sits next to Harriet and begins flicking through phrasebook.*
Harriet: (really quite perturbed) Um...
RBG: (reading from phrasebook) Do you love me?
Harriet: (looking helplessly at her parents, who are far more amused by this than they should be) ...I'm a little uncomfortable with the way this conversation is going.
RBG: I adore you. You mean everything to me.
Harriet: ...I think I'll just go to the front of the boat now.
Also, if a person should do this and then persist in yelling "Lady! Hey, lady! Will you go out with me?" or handing me a phone and saying "Lady! Can you text 'Hello, sweetheart, I love you so much'?" (particularly if he won't tell me why he wants me to do this and ignores my pointing out that, as I don't own a phone, I am the single worst person on the boat at texting), he should face any consequences if I should snap and say, "I have a name! It's Fergus," 'Fergus' being the name of one of the young men in the party. (**)
...dogs:
Dogs love Fergus. Why do dogs love Fergus? They follow him as he walks along the street, they come up to sit by his chair or rear up and put their paws on the back of it in restaurants, they probably go on pilgrimages to die at his feet. But he's not particularly nice to them, is he? I mean, a couple of nights into the holiday, the dog from next door came around to our villa. Fergus affectionately named it 'Dickhead'. In fact, the name managed to catch on with everyone in the villa. I couldn't possibly think of her as anything else now. Every night she'd come around, and we'd all stroke her and say 'Awww, Dickhead!'. It must have looked bizarre.
...getting drunk for the first time in one's life:
Conclusion: being drunk is an interesting and not unenjoyable experience, but it's just not worth the throwing up and wanting to die the next day. I vaguely remember hugging Nick in gratitude because he was the only person staying sober (little knowing that he was going to get far more drunk than I was by the end of the night, also for the first time in his life), and rambling about grammar, 'hoorah' versus 'huzzah' and how I couldn't figure out how the alcohol changed my behaviour (which really irritated me, because part of the reason I actually drank that night was in a spirit of lively investigation - I wanted to work out why people behave differently when they are drunk). I then went back to the villa, greeted Dickhead, spent half an hour or so rather unconvincingly pretending to be dead and then got horribly sick. I can't stand the taste of lager now.
...shag band shenanigans:
A Nice Gesture:
Fergus: Ah, wish I hadn't spent all my money now. (looking at wristbands. Well, they're essentially bracelets, but he insisted on calling them 'wristbands'. Presumably that makes them sound more manly.)
Harriet: (feeling generous) Which one did you want?
*He points it out. She buys it for him. He seems surprised, but thanks her.*
An Awkward Situation:
Joseph: Harriet, why are you flirting with Fergus?
Harriet: What? I was just being nice.
Joseph: You just bought him a shag band.
Harriet: ...what's a 'shag band'? *pause* Do I want to know?
Joseph: Basically, it's an invitation for him to have sex with you.
Harriet: ...
A Very Awkward Situation:
Harriet: Hey, Fergus, I wanted to apologise for accidentally asking you to have sex with me.
Fergus: ...What?
Harriet: (feeling something is not quite right here) Um...
Joseph: (helpfully) She bought you a shag band.
Fergus: What, that wristband? That wasn't a shag band.
Harriet: ...
Fergus: ...
Harriet: Joseph, I am going to kill you.
...people who ogle nine-year-olds:
Fergus: You see that girl over there? She keeps looking at me.
Patrick: Which one?
Fergus: That one with the brown hair, she keeps looking at me. See? *stares* D'you think she's fit?
Patrick: Fergus...
Fergus: How old do you think she is? Look! Look, right there! She keeps doing it!
Patrick: Fergus, she's about eight or nine.
Fergus: Nah, I reckon she's about our age. *stares*
Patrick: She's definitely eight or nine.
Fergus: What about the one next to her?
Patrick: *squints* ...seven?
Fergus: Nah.
*Time passes. The girls stand up.*
Fergus: OH GOD
Everyone: What?
Fergus: OH GOD THEY ARE NINE
Everyone: *snort*
Fergus: Look at them, they're about this tall! Oh God, they were nine years old. I'm just going to have to kill myself, you know that?
ONE WEEK LATER:
Fergus: Hey, Paddy, fit blonde.
Patrick: Where?
Fergus: *points*
Patrick: ...Fergus, she's about eleven.
...people who run onto the beach and yell 'I NEED A SHAG!':
I firmly believe that, if Fergus were a Pokémon, he would be perpetually suffering from a status effect called 'sexual frustration'. After every turn: 'FERGUS is hurt by sexual frustration!'. His attacks would be BACKUP ('FERGUS used BACKUP! Three million DOGS (Growlithe?) appeared!'), SING, and DRINK ('FERGUS used DRINK! FERGUS is getting drunk! FERGUS's ATTACK rose! FERGUS's ACCURACY fell! FERGUS's HAPPINESS rose! Effects of sexual frustration are amplified! FERGUS is hurt by sexual frustration! FERGUS fainted!').
As an example of Fergus' girl-chasing, there were a couple of girls on a balcony in Calis Beach ('Calis' should, I think, have accents on the 'c' and 's', but I don't know what they are or how to reproduce them), and Fergus and Patrick kept walking past, flashing pocket lasers at them and waving merrily as they grew steadily more irritated. When the girls eventually got up and made for the exit the boys fled, and Fergus spent the rest of the holiday cursing himself for doing so and mourning the loss of his chance with the Balcony Girls.
How they could have failed when their seduction techniques were so flawless is beyond me.
I tried to comfort him, but accidentally ended up saying, "There'll be plenty more men for you to flash at." This was really quite an interesting slip, seeing as Nick had not thirty minutes earlier mistakenly said, "Fergus chases after boys." Most mysterious.
While we're on the subject of sexual frustration, Turkish television - or at least the one in our villa - picks up about ten pornography channels, all ridiculously bad (all they do is sway from side to side and take their clothes off, or sit in swimming pools and take their clothes off, or lie on sofas and take their clothes off - how much do these girls get paid just to masturbate in front of cameras? Granted, I don't know what a good porn channel would be like, but I would expect more than an unbelievably bored-looking girl doing a little naked dance), so of course we had to watch them ('we' being most of the teenagers, Nick excepted because he apparently derives neither sexual gratification nor amusement from these channels - good for him, he's got more resolve than the rest of us. I couldn't help watching. Have you ever seen these channels? They're hilarious).
When we were watching these, Patrick would hit the 'off' button whenever anyone came in, so it would look like we were glued to a screen full of static (convincing!). This was probably unnecessary, as the only time we got caught was by my father, who protested loudly when we changed the channel ('Where's the nice girl gone?') and then gave us a lesson on how we can tell from the colour of a woman's nipples whether she's been pregnant. (You should hear him lecture on drugs. "Alcohol is fine - you should really drink alcohol, actually, it'd make you more talkative - cocaine is fine, it's just heroin you shouldn't take. If you want to take heroin, take ecstasy instead, because the lethal dosage is much higher." I bet some people would kill to have such liberal parents. I don't even want to take drugs.)
One exchange that amused me more than it should have, while we were watching a semi-clad girl drape herself across a sofa:
Fred (who is, by the way, eleven years old - we are shockingly irresponsible): Why don't they ever have men on these channels?
Joseph: They'd lose all their money, wouldn't they?
Fergus: Yeah, nobody'd want to see that. How many girls do you know who watch porn?
Harriet: Er, hello?
... and people who write obscene songs about total strangers:
Patrick: Hey, those people at the next table keep looking at us and laughing.
Fergus: *looks* Yeah, that whole family's staring at us.
(This should not be surprising, as Patrick and Fergus were previously staring at and rating one of the girls in said family, but oh well.) (***)
Fergus: Right, on the count of three, we all stare at them.
(Everyone does so. The father laughs at something someone in his family has said, glances in our direction, then does a double-take and looks terrified. To be honest, I can't blame him. I have never seen a more unnerving expression than Fergus' grinning stare.)
(Time passes.)
Fergus: They're all looking at us again.
Patrick: Should we go up and ask them why they hate us?
Fergus: We could make a song.
Patrick (singing):
Why do you hate us?
What have we done?
We're just sitting here eating our food...
(Fergus pulls a napkin and pen towards him and begins work on his groundbreaking lyrics. Eventually, he reads them out to us:)
Fergus:
Why do you hate us?
We sit all alone in our miserable seats.
You treat us like dogs
And laugh at our feats.
(So far, so good. But then...)
Fergus:
You're a bunch of fucking cocks.
Why don't you suck our dicks all night?
(...and there is more, and more obscene, but it will not be repeated here. Fred then, of course, just has to compose his own.)
Fred:
Hello, people!
I like you a lot.
You must be very nice
And never smoke pot.
Come on, everybody,
Let's be friends
Live this night 'til the end
And have lots of fun! Yeah!
There are twelve of us
and only five of you.
Come on, everybody,
let's chew chew chew!
We're sitting at our tables
watching in awe
just sitting alone
can be such a bore.
Let's never fight
and always agree
also never use the sink
to go for a pee.
(He'll go far, this boy. Patrick promptly demands the song rights. When it's topping the charts and making millions, spare a thought for us.
In the meantime the family has left, which is probably just as well - had they still been there when we left I would have felt compelled to apologise for our staring, which would have a) been awkward and b) caused my companions to lose any respect they may have had for me. Also, what if Fergus had actually decided to serenade them? It doesn't bear thinking about.)
... (these last three all, incidentally, referring to the same person).
And I loved every minute of it, excepting the minutes during which I was terrified that I had allowed my cousin and friend to get killed:
Harriet, Fergus and Patrick: Lookin' at ruins, doo dee doo...
Strange Man: *sits down between them*
Harriet, Fergus, Patrick: *exchange glances*
Strange Man: *speaks in English so accented as to be entirely unintelligible, while pointing. Patrick, with his super powers, can somehow understand.*
Patrick: Yeah... yeah, what are they? *stands* Hey, Fergus, look over there. What do you think those ruins are?
Strange Man: *leads the three towards the further ruins. As he steps over a barrier protecting a mosaic, Harriet begins to have misgivings.*
Harriet: Guys, I think I'll go back to the car.
Fergus: Sure, we'll meet you there.
Harriet: *begins walking back*
Harriet's Mind: Uh, Ri?
Harriet: Hey, I'm glad you're here. I wanted to ask you about that Captain Jack and James Sunderland thing. Are you sure it's a good idea? I mean, one Doctor Who/Silent Hill crossover should be enough, surely.
Harriet's Mind: Are you aware that you've just let your cousin and friend, two of the few people that you're able to talk to, that you're completely comfortable around - are you aware that you've just let them get led off by some strange man to God knows where?
*pause*
Harriet: ...Shit! (****)
...and the twenty-four hours between my cousins and Fergus' (by now all firmly on the list of People I Unconditionally Love) leaving and our own, during which I was rather morose and also had indigestion.
Or, it appears, considerably longer! Our flight was scheduled to leave at four o'clock Turkish Time. It is now half-past six. As I draft this entry, leaning against a wall in Dalaman Airport, I am mentally composing a song. The song is called 'Fuck You All, I Want To Go Home'. It is not a good song, and the lyrics are repetitive, and most of it is ripped off from that song about the London Underground, but I feel it expresses my state of mind fairly adequately. The plane is delayed. It is delayed by fifteen hours. I am not happy about this. (*****)
* Strictly speaking, the agent's name was not in fact Stupid Conning Git Of A Villa Agent. He was Tamer Yilmaz, from pedinivillas.com. Just so you know where not to book your holiday.
** Note that I did not actually do this. But I would very much have liked to.
*** At this point, I feel I should mention that Fergus is not in fact completely sex-obsessed, and it's a little unfair that all these anecdotes seem to portray him as such. Most of them take place after he's been drinking. And you have to remember that I have the slightly unfortunate habit of mocking everyone.
**** I almost never swear, but there are some situations that warrant it, and realising that you've just merrily waved off two people you care about to their possible deaths is one of them. Fortunately they were fine, but Hyne that was a panicky ten minutes.
***** Of course, now that I'm home and happy, I've got nothing against the airport at all.
And now I'm off to catch up on a fortnight's worth of LJ posts! Hurrah!
(EDIT: Wow, reading this over again... we all sound so debauched. It's a little scary, actually. This is why I don't usually post about my Real Life, methinks. My friends, family and I are all good people, really! I swear!)
For full comprehension of this post, a quick guide to the people mentioned:
Matthew is the elder of my cousins.
Patrick is the younger cousin. Fergus is Patrick's friend. Both are fifteen years old.
Fred is the younger of my brothers at eleven. Joseph is my other brother - he's fourteen, three years younger than me, but I can't call him my 'little brother' because he is freakishly tall. That's his middle name: Joseph 'Freakishly Tall' Evans. Nick is Joseph's friend.
Harriet is my real name.
Random Boat Guy is some random guy who works on a boat.)
Ah, Turkey. A holiday filled with unfortunate booking incidents:
Stupid Conning Git Of A Villa Agent: Hey, want to book a Turkish villa?
Innocent Evans Family: Okay! Have some money!
SCGOAVA: We're trying to find a replacement villa for you. Sorry about all this.
IEF: Wait, what?
SCGOAVA: Whoops, sent the wrong e-mail. Heh heh. Heh.
IEF: ...okay...
SCGOAVA: OMG SUDDENLY PROBLEM WITH BOOKING.
IEF: What? You're kidding, right?
SCGOAVA: OMG CAN'T BE SOLVED.
IEF: ...we're leaving in two days. The other family are leaving tomorrow. What the hell are we supposed to do?
My Amazing Mother: *somehow manages to book a new villa for us all in less than a day.*
SCGOAVA: OMG DON'T GO TO THE POLICE.
Enraged Evans Family: Screw you, you owe us four thousand quid. *goes to the police.*
Police: This guy? Yeah, he's a conman. The owner of the villa he was pretending to hire out sold it years ago. You'd think his name would have tipped you off. (*)
...belly-dancing:
Perhaps I went out in front of maybe thirty people with Patrick and Fergus when I hadn't even been drinking, and the three of us tried to belly-dance, failed spectacularly and made total fools of ourselves. Perhaps I did not. I am not going to tell you. You can probably guess.
...scorching heat:
Well, okay, I don't have anything to say about the scorching heat (beyond the fact that my skin is no longer so pale that I look like a walking corpse, which is a Good Thing). It was Turkey, it was hot, what did you expect? So I'll take this opportunity to praise Joseph's bargaining skills, because they really are very good indeed - he managed to bring a belt down from thirty-five lire (approximately fifteen pounds) to nine (four pounds). Also to recommend A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. And to say that listening to the trip-hop version of Theme of Laura on headphones is an incredibly strange experience, because there are some weird vibrating notes throughout - it's particularly noticeable at the end - that are specifically pitched to give you a headache. I swear. Plus the creepy echoing voices, of course.
...problems with plumbing:
Seriously, plumbing-wise it has not been a good holiday. One toilet did not flush properly. One bathroom began smelling strongly of sewage about five days in, and the door had to be kept shut for the rest of the holiday. The tap in the kitchen couldn't be switched off, and when plumbers came in to fix it they somehow managed to blow up the hot water tank (which was really rather fantastic, watching from outside - first there was a mysterious BOOM, then a rushing noise, then steam began billowing out of the roof, and then dirty water cascaded out of the side of the villa. It was oddly hilarious). Two nights before we left, the spa bath began to roar in a most unsettling manner and to leak scalding water all over the bathroom floor. Amazing stuff. This villa is a walking disaster, or would be if it could walk.
...creepy waiters:
Look, I'm sure that there are plenty of perfectly nice Turkish men who are not creepy at all. I'm certain of it. The problem is that I didn't seem to meet any of them.
So, uh, if a waiter never strokes my arm, plays with my hair, rubs my back, calls me 'darling' (Joseph tried calling the waiter who did this incessantly 'darling' and got called a 'gay boy' in return), leans uncomfortably close to me, grabs my hand or wrist and attempts to pull me out of my seat and into a conga line that I clearly do not want to join, or puts an arm around my waist again, I will be a happy woman. While we're on the subject, this also applies to workers on boats who do the following:
Random Boat Guy: Hey, lady! (reading from a phrasebook) You can sit here. *points to the bench on which Harriet is sitting.*
Harriet: I'm sorry?
RBG: You can sit here.
Harriet: ...thank you?
RBG: *sits next to Harriet and begins flicking through phrasebook.*
Harriet: (really quite perturbed) Um...
RBG: (reading from phrasebook) Do you love me?
Harriet: (looking helplessly at her parents, who are far more amused by this than they should be) ...I'm a little uncomfortable with the way this conversation is going.
RBG: I adore you. You mean everything to me.
Harriet: ...I think I'll just go to the front of the boat now.
Also, if a person should do this and then persist in yelling "Lady! Hey, lady! Will you go out with me?" or handing me a phone and saying "Lady! Can you text 'Hello, sweetheart, I love you so much'?" (particularly if he won't tell me why he wants me to do this and ignores my pointing out that, as I don't own a phone, I am the single worst person on the boat at texting), he should face any consequences if I should snap and say, "I have a name! It's Fergus," 'Fergus' being the name of one of the young men in the party. (**)
...dogs:
Dogs love Fergus. Why do dogs love Fergus? They follow him as he walks along the street, they come up to sit by his chair or rear up and put their paws on the back of it in restaurants, they probably go on pilgrimages to die at his feet. But he's not particularly nice to them, is he? I mean, a couple of nights into the holiday, the dog from next door came around to our villa. Fergus affectionately named it 'Dickhead'. In fact, the name managed to catch on with everyone in the villa. I couldn't possibly think of her as anything else now. Every night she'd come around, and we'd all stroke her and say 'Awww, Dickhead!'. It must have looked bizarre.
...getting drunk for the first time in one's life:
Conclusion: being drunk is an interesting and not unenjoyable experience, but it's just not worth the throwing up and wanting to die the next day. I vaguely remember hugging Nick in gratitude because he was the only person staying sober (little knowing that he was going to get far more drunk than I was by the end of the night, also for the first time in his life), and rambling about grammar, 'hoorah' versus 'huzzah' and how I couldn't figure out how the alcohol changed my behaviour (which really irritated me, because part of the reason I actually drank that night was in a spirit of lively investigation - I wanted to work out why people behave differently when they are drunk). I then went back to the villa, greeted Dickhead, spent half an hour or so rather unconvincingly pretending to be dead and then got horribly sick. I can't stand the taste of lager now.
...shag band shenanigans:
A Nice Gesture:
Fergus: Ah, wish I hadn't spent all my money now. (looking at wristbands. Well, they're essentially bracelets, but he insisted on calling them 'wristbands'. Presumably that makes them sound more manly.)
Harriet: (feeling generous) Which one did you want?
*He points it out. She buys it for him. He seems surprised, but thanks her.*
An Awkward Situation:
Joseph: Harriet, why are you flirting with Fergus?
Harriet: What? I was just being nice.
Joseph: You just bought him a shag band.
Harriet: ...what's a 'shag band'? *pause* Do I want to know?
Joseph: Basically, it's an invitation for him to have sex with you.
Harriet: ...
A Very Awkward Situation:
Harriet: Hey, Fergus, I wanted to apologise for accidentally asking you to have sex with me.
Fergus: ...What?
Harriet: (feeling something is not quite right here) Um...
Joseph: (helpfully) She bought you a shag band.
Fergus: What, that wristband? That wasn't a shag band.
Harriet: ...
Fergus: ...
Harriet: Joseph, I am going to kill you.
...people who ogle nine-year-olds:
Fergus: You see that girl over there? She keeps looking at me.
Patrick: Which one?
Fergus: That one with the brown hair, she keeps looking at me. See? *stares* D'you think she's fit?
Patrick: Fergus...
Fergus: How old do you think she is? Look! Look, right there! She keeps doing it!
Patrick: Fergus, she's about eight or nine.
Fergus: Nah, I reckon she's about our age. *stares*
Patrick: She's definitely eight or nine.
Fergus: What about the one next to her?
Patrick: *squints* ...seven?
Fergus: Nah.
*Time passes. The girls stand up.*
Fergus: OH GOD
Everyone: What?
Fergus: OH GOD THEY ARE NINE
Everyone: *snort*
Fergus: Look at them, they're about this tall! Oh God, they were nine years old. I'm just going to have to kill myself, you know that?
Fergus: Hey, Paddy, fit blonde.
Patrick: Where?
Fergus: *points*
Patrick: ...Fergus, she's about eleven.
...people who run onto the beach and yell 'I NEED A SHAG!':
I firmly believe that, if Fergus were a Pokémon, he would be perpetually suffering from a status effect called 'sexual frustration'. After every turn: 'FERGUS is hurt by sexual frustration!'. His attacks would be BACKUP ('FERGUS used BACKUP! Three million DOGS (Growlithe?) appeared!'), SING, and DRINK ('FERGUS used DRINK! FERGUS is getting drunk! FERGUS's ATTACK rose! FERGUS's ACCURACY fell! FERGUS's HAPPINESS rose! Effects of sexual frustration are amplified! FERGUS is hurt by sexual frustration! FERGUS fainted!').
As an example of Fergus' girl-chasing, there were a couple of girls on a balcony in Calis Beach ('Calis' should, I think, have accents on the 'c' and 's', but I don't know what they are or how to reproduce them), and Fergus and Patrick kept walking past, flashing pocket lasers at them and waving merrily as they grew steadily more irritated. When the girls eventually got up and made for the exit the boys fled, and Fergus spent the rest of the holiday cursing himself for doing so and mourning the loss of his chance with the Balcony Girls.
How they could have failed when their seduction techniques were so flawless is beyond me.
I tried to comfort him, but accidentally ended up saying, "There'll be plenty more men for you to flash at." This was really quite an interesting slip, seeing as Nick had not thirty minutes earlier mistakenly said, "Fergus chases after boys." Most mysterious.
While we're on the subject of sexual frustration, Turkish television - or at least the one in our villa - picks up about ten pornography channels, all ridiculously bad (all they do is sway from side to side and take their clothes off, or sit in swimming pools and take their clothes off, or lie on sofas and take their clothes off - how much do these girls get paid just to masturbate in front of cameras? Granted, I don't know what a good porn channel would be like, but I would expect more than an unbelievably bored-looking girl doing a little naked dance), so of course we had to watch them ('we' being most of the teenagers, Nick excepted because he apparently derives neither sexual gratification nor amusement from these channels - good for him, he's got more resolve than the rest of us. I couldn't help watching. Have you ever seen these channels? They're hilarious).
When we were watching these, Patrick would hit the 'off' button whenever anyone came in, so it would look like we were glued to a screen full of static (convincing!). This was probably unnecessary, as the only time we got caught was by my father, who protested loudly when we changed the channel ('Where's the nice girl gone?') and then gave us a lesson on how we can tell from the colour of a woman's nipples whether she's been pregnant. (You should hear him lecture on drugs. "Alcohol is fine - you should really drink alcohol, actually, it'd make you more talkative - cocaine is fine, it's just heroin you shouldn't take. If you want to take heroin, take ecstasy instead, because the lethal dosage is much higher." I bet some people would kill to have such liberal parents. I don't even want to take drugs.)
One exchange that amused me more than it should have, while we were watching a semi-clad girl drape herself across a sofa:
Fred (who is, by the way, eleven years old - we are shockingly irresponsible): Why don't they ever have men on these channels?
Joseph: They'd lose all their money, wouldn't they?
Fergus: Yeah, nobody'd want to see that. How many girls do you know who watch porn?
Harriet: Er, hello?
... and people who write obscene songs about total strangers:
Patrick: Hey, those people at the next table keep looking at us and laughing.
Fergus: *looks* Yeah, that whole family's staring at us.
(This should not be surprising, as Patrick and Fergus were previously staring at and rating one of the girls in said family, but oh well.) (***)
Fergus: Right, on the count of three, we all stare at them.
(Everyone does so. The father laughs at something someone in his family has said, glances in our direction, then does a double-take and looks terrified. To be honest, I can't blame him. I have never seen a more unnerving expression than Fergus' grinning stare.)
(Time passes.)
Fergus: They're all looking at us again.
Patrick: Should we go up and ask them why they hate us?
Fergus: We could make a song.
Patrick (singing):
Why do you hate us?
What have we done?
We're just sitting here eating our food...
(Fergus pulls a napkin and pen towards him and begins work on his groundbreaking lyrics. Eventually, he reads them out to us:)
Fergus:
Why do you hate us?
We sit all alone in our miserable seats.
You treat us like dogs
And laugh at our feats.
(So far, so good. But then...)
Fergus:
You're a bunch of fucking cocks.
Why don't you suck our dicks all night?
(...and there is more, and more obscene, but it will not be repeated here. Fred then, of course, just has to compose his own.)
Fred:
Hello, people!
I like you a lot.
You must be very nice
And never smoke pot.
Come on, everybody,
Let's be friends
Live this night 'til the end
And have lots of fun! Yeah!
There are twelve of us
and only five of you.
Come on, everybody,
let's chew chew chew!
We're sitting at our tables
watching in awe
just sitting alone
can be such a bore.
Let's never fight
and always agree
also never use the sink
to go for a pee.
(He'll go far, this boy. Patrick promptly demands the song rights. When it's topping the charts and making millions, spare a thought for us.
In the meantime the family has left, which is probably just as well - had they still been there when we left I would have felt compelled to apologise for our staring, which would have a) been awkward and b) caused my companions to lose any respect they may have had for me. Also, what if Fergus had actually decided to serenade them? It doesn't bear thinking about.)
... (these last three all, incidentally, referring to the same person).
And I loved every minute of it, excepting the minutes during which I was terrified that I had allowed my cousin and friend to get killed:
Harriet, Fergus and Patrick: Lookin' at ruins, doo dee doo...
Strange Man: *sits down between them*
Harriet, Fergus, Patrick: *exchange glances*
Strange Man: *speaks in English so accented as to be entirely unintelligible, while pointing. Patrick, with his super powers, can somehow understand.*
Patrick: Yeah... yeah, what are they? *stands* Hey, Fergus, look over there. What do you think those ruins are?
Strange Man: *leads the three towards the further ruins. As he steps over a barrier protecting a mosaic, Harriet begins to have misgivings.*
Harriet: Guys, I think I'll go back to the car.
Fergus: Sure, we'll meet you there.
Harriet: *begins walking back*
Harriet's Mind: Uh, Ri?
Harriet: Hey, I'm glad you're here. I wanted to ask you about that Captain Jack and James Sunderland thing. Are you sure it's a good idea? I mean, one Doctor Who/Silent Hill crossover should be enough, surely.
Harriet's Mind: Are you aware that you've just let your cousin and friend, two of the few people that you're able to talk to, that you're completely comfortable around - are you aware that you've just let them get led off by some strange man to God knows where?
*pause*
Harriet: ...Shit! (****)
...and the twenty-four hours between my cousins and Fergus' (by now all firmly on the list of People I Unconditionally Love) leaving and our own, during which I was rather morose and also had indigestion.
Or, it appears, considerably longer! Our flight was scheduled to leave at four o'clock Turkish Time. It is now half-past six. As I draft this entry, leaning against a wall in Dalaman Airport, I am mentally composing a song. The song is called 'Fuck You All, I Want To Go Home'. It is not a good song, and the lyrics are repetitive, and most of it is ripped off from that song about the London Underground, but I feel it expresses my state of mind fairly adequately. The plane is delayed. It is delayed by fifteen hours. I am not happy about this. (*****)
* Strictly speaking, the agent's name was not in fact Stupid Conning Git Of A Villa Agent. He was Tamer Yilmaz, from pedinivillas.com. Just so you know where not to book your holiday.
** Note that I did not actually do this. But I would very much have liked to.
*** At this point, I feel I should mention that Fergus is not in fact completely sex-obsessed, and it's a little unfair that all these anecdotes seem to portray him as such. Most of them take place after he's been drinking. And you have to remember that I have the slightly unfortunate habit of mocking everyone.
**** I almost never swear, but there are some situations that warrant it, and realising that you've just merrily waved off two people you care about to their possible deaths is one of them. Fortunately they were fine, but Hyne that was a panicky ten minutes.
***** Of course, now that I'm home and happy, I've got nothing against the airport at all.
And now I'm off to catch up on a fortnight's worth of LJ posts! Hurrah!
(EDIT: Wow, reading this over again... we all sound so debauched. It's a little scary, actually. This is why I don't usually post about my Real Life, methinks. My friends, family and I are all good people, really! I swear!)