The perfect (travel) match?
Finding the ideal travel partner is no easy task. Comedian Lucy Porter gives the lowdown on her more challenging companions, from some of her most memorable trips
ILLUSTRATIONS JON BERKELEY
The Sergeant Major
‘Sarge’ turned up at the airport with a clipboard and some coloured pens. He’d done high-street price comparisons on all duty-free items and brought a packed lunch. And there is nothing wrong with bringing a packed lunch, except that he’d labelled his sandwiches.
He was the new boyfriend of a friend of ours and he’d decided at the last minute to join a group of us on a trip to Amsterdam. A born leader and organiser, Sarge actually worked in book publishing, but we called him that because literature’s gain was the military’s loss.
To be fair, as someone with the organisational skills of a three-year-old, I was initially impressed by the extent of his forward planning. Sarge was comfortably in charge and we all fell in line dutifully, happily even, as he route-marched us to the departure gate. The holiday however, was somewhat tense. Whenever the rest of us fancied lazing about in the Vondelpark or wandering along the canals, Sarge would bellow at us to hurry along – “if we skip lunch,” he’d urge, “we’ll be just in time to use this coupon for half-price admission to the Tulip Museum.”
Things came to a head on the last day of our trip (it was only a weekend but it felt like a never ending tour of duty), when Sarge dragged us all out of a coffee shop to join him on a bicycle ride. Reaching the end of his being-bossed-around tether, my boyfriend shouted at Sarge, Sarge shouted back, Sarge’s girlfriend started crying so I shouted at my boyfriend, he shouted back at me, my best mate shouted at him and pretty soon we were all shouting. Faced with mutiny from the lower orders, Sarge behaved like a true leader and slipped away while we were still fighting among ourselves. When we saw him next at the airport, he behaved as if nothing had happened. In fact, he simply took charge again.
Although we’ll never go on holiday with my friend and the Sarge again, I can’t avoid him altogether – he is now married to our friend and they’ve got two lovely children (who ALWAYS know EXACTLY what is in their lunchboxes) but thankfully, he’s a lot more laid-back.
The Authentics
The Authentics are a pair of seasoned globetrotters who usually go somewhere that is far-flung, so coming with my boyfriend and I to mainland Europe a few years ago was rather unusual for them. Their ideal holiday is to somewhere that very few people have heard of, which is incredibly hard to get to, and ideally, war-torn.
As you may have gathered, I am a little on the lazy side, and for the entire week we saw next to nothing of The Authentics because they were so desperately in search of ‘authentic local culture’ and we were just as desperate for a lounger in close proximity to the poolside bar.
We felt super guilty when, every evening, they would come back and regale us with tales of the amaaaazing little fishing port they’d found where nobody spoke a word of English and how they had managed to buy a three-litre bottle of the local crab-flavoured liqueur for the equivalent of 10p.
Eventually we started making things up to compete with them, and actually sent them off for half a day looking for the ancient ruins we’d discovered. Funnily enough, no matter how many people they asked, they never did locate Fort Bumhat.
The only time they stopped exploring was towards the end of the week when they both came down with a touch of food poisoning. We tried very hard not to gloat, but we couldn’t help thinking it might have been the crab liqueur.
The Good Time Girl
When I was in my mid-20s, I went on holiday with a girl from work. We didn’t know each other that well, but we had holiday to take at the same time and she seemed like a good laugh. At work parties, we’d both get a bit tipsy, and she’d often come in on Monday morning looking a bit the worse for wear, but I think it’s safe to say I didn’t quite realise what her definition of a good time really was.
Despite never even wearing a T-shirt to work, she turned up at the airport with her breasts straining under the slogan ‘100 per cent single’. For elevenses, she dived straight into the pub for a refreshing tequila shot and it was then that I truly understood that I was about to spend a week in the sun with Courtney Love.
Now, I am no prude and I have been known to take a drink, but I’d have collapsed by day three if I’d tried to keep up with GTG. No matter how hard she’d partied the night before – and she made Keith Richards look like Gwyneth Paltrow – GTG was always up bright and early to indulge in her other vice: tanning.
GTG approached tanning with scientific rigour. Every morning, she’d exfoliate extensively and smother herself in lotion. She did this poolside, very slowly, and it became a floorshow for onlookers. In hindsight, it was astonishing that no one tried to tuck a banknote into her bikini. The lotion smelled deliciously tropical, and I fancied sharing it, but when I looked for the SPF factor, I realised it was pure coconut oil. She was just basting herself all day.
We’d chosen one of the livelier Greek islands, so luckily, GTG managed to latch onto a group of lads and spent most of her evenings with them while I caught up on my reading. Shortly after the holiday, I left my job, but actually, we still keep in touch, and she’s still a wonderfully colourful character – that colour being a deep, mahogany tan.
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