K Cider - September 1988

“So what do you actually do on your holiday on your own?”

Much the same as you do when you go away as a couple, or on with your family, but with more booze and reading probably, and fewer arguments.

I have friends for whom solo holidays are an anathema, they simply don’t understand how the concept works. “You go away, on your own!” They exclaim, as if I had just murdered my non-existent brother and buried him under our newly-laid patio.

I first went away on my own when I was eighteen, on a Shearings coach holiday to Scotland so I suppose technically it was a foreign holiday. I was the youngest traveller on the coach by around thirty years, and was quickly adopted by a group of three ‘merry widows’ who took me under their wing and made sure that no harm came to me, even if I wanted it to.  With hindsight the coach driver was a bit of an odd fish, a somewhat nervous guy in his late forties who with probably spent a little too much time with an eighteen year old youth travelling on his own for the first time. If I had such a thing as a ‘gaydar’ at the time (thirty five years on it’s barely developed that much more to be honest) I may have spent a little less time with him watching sunsets on the Isle of Skye.  Maybe the merry widows were more perceptive, and were trying to protect me.

What they didn’t protect me from was alcohol poisoning. One evening in Oban, we were in the crowded hotel bar, watching some entertainment - to be honest I can’t recall what sort, let’s assume it was bagpipe music. I do remember I was stuck in the corner seat of a table of four, with the three ladies on the other chairs. They kept buying drinks against my feeble protestations, I wasn’t used to hotel bar prices I admit and whilst I could have afforded my own drinks I had never reckoned on getting into rounds, and was grateful for the free booze. I was drinking K cider at the time, deceptive little black bottles of poison.  It tasted sweet, almost like pop. 

It was only when I tried to get up at the end of the evening, and found that I appeared to have lost the use of my legs, that I realised that I had drunk more than I ever had in my life, having never imbibed in pubs before the legal age. The widows looked at me concerned, but somehow I managed to reassure  them that I was OK, and weaved my way to my hotel room, a tiny room with a single bed against one wall, and a narrow shelf at just the right height to bang your head on each morning. This was the last night at this hotel before moving onto Inverness the next day, via Loch Ness and (I was certain) the chance to see famous monster.

I lay on the bed on my back fully clothed, and experienced for the first time the spinning room motion that is known by every drunk since Bacchus first fermented grapes.  Closing eyes did not help. I knew in that dreadful moment that I was going to be sick.

Unfortunately, this room did not have a bathroom, only a handbasin. A small one. I knew I wouldn’t make it down the corridor to the shared facilities, and they could have been occupied anyhow. I quickly discovered the capacity of the basin was not equal to the capacity of my stomach. With horror I saw it fill, and not drain away…

I woke early the next morning to my travel alarm, and to a horrible smell in the room, face down, and with a taste in my mouth that I could only describe as ‘icky’. Apart from a dull head I didn’t feel as bad I thought I would be though, I think most of the excess alcohol had been returned before it could be absorbed by my body. I looked at the room around me. I had packed my case the night before, leaving just my coat, and a clean pair of boxers and socks to change into. I looked over to the sink in the corner, the splashback behind which had certainly earned its name the night before, and the beige, well mostly beige carpet directly underneath it. Oh dear.

Dear Reader, What would you have done?

Much to my shame, and in my defence I was an eighteen year old with very little experience of this (though this hasn’t happened all that often afterwards to be honest), I did my ablutions in the bathroom at the end of the corridor. I then opened the sash window wide - this was before the era of restrictors on hotel windows, left a five pound note on the melamine dresser, took my case downstairs, and waited in the tiny lobby with red-flocked wallpaper for the (possibly) lecherous coach driver to pull the vehicle round.

“Didn’t you want the breakfast this morning lad?”

“No, I didn’t feel up to it.”

“You do look a bit green.”

“Yeah.”

The Merry Widows came through and were very concerned about my non-appearance in the dining room.  I explained that I had started to feel a little ill and had to have an early night. The sympathetic looks from the septuagenarians showed that they knew exactly what sort of illness I’d suffered.

To this day I still can’t drink cider, the taste or even the smell makes me nauseous and I’m returned to the smallest hotel room in the world. And if you were a cleaner at the Great Western Hotel in September 1988, I’m so, so sorry.