Random reminder

Press, 23 October 1980, Page 22

Random reminder

TRAVEL TALK

Much of the nose peeling back in a dry, pale-pink flap like the sole of a long-neglected ballet shoe. The facial skin glossy, engorged, angry-looking. The hair brittle and sere. The body’s frail covering desiccated, discoloured, ravaged with the marks of sandflies. The eyes blotched and sore, the gut monstrously distended, the wallet limp and flat. All the signs of a jolly good holiday. In New Zealand, anyway,

where the appeal of the great outdoors is predominant, perhaps because what is going on indoors is by no means great, severe damage to the body’s outer shell and the almost complete destruction of the family’s solvency for the next 12 months remain the hallmarks of a good trip. It is not so everywhere. Throughout the world, instant poverty and a tan are still the ways of flaunting a fine holiday, of course, but there is the additional • tradition of revealing souvenirs scattered artfully around the house.. Salt and pepper shakers in the form of interlaced, miniature Chianti bottles. An ashtray or two in the form of a small wooden clog. A tiny model of the Doge’s Palace which, upon

shaking, will perform an attractive snowstorm. A pen with, encapsulated within, an Eiffel Tower that slides up and down, for some reason, according to the angle of the pen and the whim of the owner. Words, too, can be made to betray an enviable tour. Who does not retain for several years after three days of holiday in Rome the habit of saying “Ciao” (pronounced “Chow”) instead

> of "Goodbye” or, as some would : regrettably have it, “Cheery?” Perhaps ; a phrase or two, let slip, accidentally. ; But care has to be exercised here. The : knowledge of certain phrases in a ■ foreign language might indicate an : overseas experience rather less than normal. A Christchurch couple recently had i to stay for the week-end an eight-year- : old friend of their son, a youngster who had just returned from a stay in : Germany with his family. Though they * are reluctant to ask what went on ; over there, they are intrigued by the German he picked up on his trip. He can could to 20 in German, ana can say “Good morning” and “Good evening,” “Do you speak German?” and “Stop it, or I’ll scream.”