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The weekend from hell

December 02, 2003 ~ 2:11 p.m.

Jewish people have a wonderful expression that I am going to borrow which more than adequately describes how my weekend went:

Oy vey!

Yes, that about does it. The weekend wasn�t all bad. The highlights include:

� Spending a night in a swish, four-star hotel Friday night.

� My mother sharing a joint with me�the very first time, as far as I know, that she has ever tried cannabis.

� Enjoying a very pleasant fit of the giggles and mild but fun hallucinations while trying to pack for Saturday.

� Feeding the pigeons in St. Mark�s Square, a gondola ride, gazing at the truly awe-inspiring interior of the Basilica, and wandering through the narrow streets to find the Rialto Bridge on a mild Venetian Saturday night.

� Having a pleasant game of cards with the wife and Mom in the fourth-floor foyer of our hotel.

� Seeing a lot more of Venice than we thought we�d see on the ferry back to the airport.

� A ride on one of those buggies that transport people and their luggage across the airport.

Now for the several, considerable �lowlights�:

FRIDAY NIGHT

� Not being able to find the four-star hotel at Gatwick, as I�d been told�and no wonder, considering it was actually in Crawley.

� Finding out that my mom (referred to here as �Mom�) and my mom-in-law Jo (referred to here as �Mum�) were assigned a double bed at the hotel, and painstakingly having to switch to a twin-beds room.

� The wife and I finding out that the Jacuzzi was shut once were in our swimsuits and ready to relax in it.

� Lighting up the joint before I was aware that Room Service had been ordered, and having to throw open the windows and spray copious amounts of perfume around the room in order to kill the scent of marijuana.

SATURDAY

� The taxi that we�d reserved at 6:30 a.m. to transport us to our terminal at Gatwick Airport had taken off without us, because�get this�we didn�t arrive in the lobby until 6:31, and then having to wait for another to cab to arrive.

� Mom spiralling into a dark mood at the airport once it was discovered that we lost her copy of Majesty magazine.

� Serious confusion on the plane to Venice as to our seating arrangements, increasing the severity of Mom�s dark mood.

� Not being able to sit for the hour-long boat ride into St. Mark�s Square due to crowding, and then trying to find the hotel.

� Finding out that the building our rooms were located in was still recovering from the flood of 1966, thus causing a horrible whiff, and having six flights of stairs to climb to our fourth floor chambers, adding insult to injury for poor Mom. Mum was none too pleased either.

� Getting repeatedly harassed by gondoliers�even attempting to run away from them�until we managed to beat the price down to an acceptable level (which turned out to be a positive).

� The wife (whom everybody here knows as �Squirrel�) getting very rude service from a tobacco shop, where she�d gone to buy packs of cigarettes for a co-worker. (�Just goes to show you that the French don�t have a monopoly on rudeness,� in the wife�s own words.)

SUNDAY

� Mum waking up feeling awful from a bout of influenza.

� Both Mum and Squirrel having been bitten alive by mosquitoes in their sleep (somehow, Mom and I avoided getting stung).

� Waiting nearly an hour in the line to get through security at Marco Polo Airport, fearing we�d miss our flight, and fuming at the Italians� notorious and obviously unchanged inefficiency.

� Mum fainting in the queue, due to the considerable heat of the airport interior, an adverse reaction to her painkillers and the weakness caused by her flu, necessitating an emergency situation. (This is the reason why we got to ride the buggy once we landed back at Gatwick.)

� Repeatedly changing plans about how to get home from the airport and whether or not to let Mum stay with us at the apartment.

And best of all, to really top things off:

� Squirrel getting into a vicious fight with a ghetto-trash woman who pushed her, insulted her and spat in her face on the train to Croydon, a fight in which I surely participated.

How I ever managed, after physically breaking up the tussle with my wife, to restrain myself from smacking that whore into next week is nothing short of a true miracle, but at least there was no danger of me getting done for assault. However, I did abuse her with a fullisade of language that, suffice to say, a council estate-dwelling douchebag like her could only understand, which I will not repeat here, and made it clear that if she wanted Round Two with me, she was more than welcome to try. She very wisely declined. Besides, Squirrel had done a good job inflicting damage on her, though she suffered some scratches herself during the m�le�. Then the both of us had to ride the rest of the way, reeling from the uncomfortable draining away of adrenaline.

But, however awful it was at the time, we both stood up to a bully and taught her a lesson she isn�t likely to forget anytime soon. That was perhaps the only good thing about the grand finale to our hectic weekend abroad. We sent out a very clear and distinct message: Do not ever, EVER screw with us.

(squirrelrat, I believe, will be writing her own perspective on the fight, so please stay tuned to her journal.)

� M.E.M.

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