Aimless and cross-purposed. Futile and almost unreadable. As good as can be given the circumstances and time allowance. Punctuationally flawed. If that’s a word.
People can generally be divided into 2 types: those who laugh at, and those who don’t laugh at, other people’s misfortunes. There is a misconception that people who find other people in unfortunate circumstances funny have autism or some other thing on a spectrum and should be treated as social lepers. This is a misconception chiefly because I quite like to laugh at other people having a crappy time and especially so because in our age of news saturation and more importantly non-news saturation means that the internet is littered, several metres deep, with unfortunate people suffering unfortunate things. And then telling the whole world about it. My time has been and my time is also to come but while I wait for the next bad thing to happen I may as well laugh like
a drain when I see a video of someone tripping up and shattering through the front window of a Greggs in Walthamstow.
Where’s this going? Oh yes, this family. This family that went on a “dream holiday”. This family from Derby that went on a “dream holiday” (note: just by leaving Derby to go anywhere you are automatically going on a dream holiday) but ended up in their “worst nightmare”. This family from Derby that went on a “dream holiday” that ended up being their “worst nightmare” AND the “holiday from hell”. It’s incredible that this family of four from Derby could go on a “dream holiday” and not notice that not only was it was booked with ‘Satan Breaks 4U’ but also mirrored exactly their collective worst nightmares. What are the chances of that?
Here’s what happened. It seems that on their “dream holiday”, and also, apparently a “well-earned holiday of a lifetime in paradise” to Jamaica the daddy, Dominic, fell ill and had to be rushed to hospital. Poor chap. It turns out that he had a perforated bowel, which is no laughing matter. What is a laughing matter is that his wife, Emily, seemed to put a great deal of the blame on the bowel itself, which was most inconsiderate in its time of choosing to perforate – “it could have happened at any time but decided to occur while we were on holiday”. What a rotten bugger of a bowel, deciding that. Why couldn’t it have chosen to perforate itself while Dominic was at work? Or on his wedding
day? Or sitting on the toilet having a poo? Not in paradise.
It goes on. Poor Dominic was rushed to hospital 50 miles away, on his own. His wife couldn’t come with him because she “had the girls” and used that age old parent/child excuse to stay at the hotel in paradise instead. Sadly, and riddled with karma, as Dominic lay in some considerable discomfort his 12 year old daughter came down with acute gastroenteritis (what are the chances of that when holidaying in Jamaica?). Which is also sad. Also, also sad was when their youngest daughter, 7 (age, not name), started being sick and complaining of an upset stomach, though in fairness she was probably just attention seeking.
This terrible, nightmarish sequence of events was only made worse when Dominic’s parents flew over to see him in hospital. So overcome with worry they promptly left him to it and went snorkelling, during which his Dad had a heart attack. That’s what you do when you visit your seriously sick son in hospital. You go snorkelling. I’m not saying he deserved that heart attack but on the other hand…
Final bit of a worthless, pointless news story about nothing interesting happening to nobody that matters is that all this cost them a holiday from hellish £21,000, most of which they had to pay up front. That was the lead off to the story – “family racks up £21k medical bill” etc. But it was all refunded through insurance which all of a sudden makes it a non-story; instead just a bunch of twats wanting to get in the news. Ok, a couple of them came away with slightly battered rectums, but isn’t that just the drawback of a foreign holiday from hell? People will say “hey did you hear about that family that…” and now you can say “yes, and I didn’t care, in fact I laughed because what was his Dad doing snorkelling anyway?”. I’ve save you a journey into non-news that you didn’t know you didn’t have to make. If only Dominic and his family had extended us the same courtesy.
G B Hewitt. 14.09.2108
On stupidity......and other causes for concern. 