Coach Trip Etiquette – a cautionary tale

 

an image of Ireland

I’ve just been on holiday with one of my oldest friends and last time we spent so much time together we were hormonal teenagers on a school trip. We probably fell out with each other at least once a day.

There were no such worries this time, we are grown-ups now and therefore much more sensible and tolerant, but, with 46 other strangers on the coach, including a Welsh driver and an Irish guide there is always the possibility that there may be a few fireworks.

Now I wouldn’t want to call anyone a female dog without good reason and one particularly diminutive and smartly dressed fellow traveller certainly doesn’t deserve to be called a rude name, but from the start there was something about her blonde fluffy bob and large innocent eyes that made me think of her as a dog. Not a common or garden variety, but one of those fancy dog breeds that sounds like it’s been named by a ten-year-old boy - a ShitzBum or a LassiePoo.

These breeds are always overly pampered, often miniature in stature and quite unforgiving in nature. We certainly got on her yappy side that evening as she bared her teeth menacingly, taking no prisoners.

It was never our intention to cause such upset. Our faux pas? Sitting on her table for the evening meal.

While seats were allocated on the coach, we were under the impression that one was free to sit at any table for dinner. It’s always good to mix things up a bit, meet new people, make connections, seek common ground.

For the first two evenings we had done just that. Being polite and friendly, discussing such topics as how many sugars one should have in a cup of tea, apparently five is perfectly acceptable! We talked about medical issues, places we’d visited, gardening, and the lack of green leafy vegetables served with dinner.

It was the third evening when the problems started because we dared try out another new table.

We did ask if we could join them and maybe from the start we should have sensed the vibe that this particular round table had been set in stone since the days of King Arthur.

Actually, we did move to make amends and keep the peace but were convinced to come back by a couple who felt really bad for not being one hundred percent welcoming. We settled down and with the table full the waitress took our orders.

That’s when “Mrs Fluffy Face” arrived.

“Where’s my cushion?” She demanded, taking the tone of Queen Victoria, certainly not amused by the state of things.

Obviously, saving dining chairs with cushions is akin to the Germans saving recliners by the pool with their beach towels – if only we had known. Only being in our mid-fifties, we are relative novices when it comes to coach holiday etiquette.

And to be fair we’d not spotted the cushion.

The waitress explained they would have to move to another table this evening to avoid messing up the food orders already being prepared and she led the woman and her friend to another table where the blue tartan pillow awaited her fussy behind.

Unfortunately, she was placed in my direct eyeline and glared at me all throughout the meal. We tried to enjoy some different conversations with new “acquaintances”, one could hardly say” friends”, but vowed not to sit there again the following evening.

Now you might think this is the end of my tale, and we learnt a valuable lesson, but there is a twist.

When we retired that night, we happened upon a pair of blue tartan chairs in an alcove just outside our room. One chair was missing a cushion.

image found on pintrest

It doesn’t require the skills of Miss Marple to deduce that our nemesis was probably staying in a room nearby. Maybe even next door.

For the first two nights of our stay, we’d not even locked our door, but that night we did in fear of being suffocated by a tartan pillow in the early hours.

As you can see, I’m here tonight to tell the tale so we survived the night, resolving to keep out of her way and the rest of the trip went by without a hitch, with no stolen seats or pillow-fighting duels at dawn but we discovered there is a far greater crime to be committed on a coach trip, than pinching someone’s seat.

Never, ever, be late back for a pick-up because a coach load of disgruntled passengers can so easily turn into a vicious pack of baying dogs, not all with the impeccable pedigree of a Lapsong – poo-bum.