Tis better to travel hopefully
than to arrive...especially when arriving at Funboys sur la Plage
Once a year Bristow escapes the drudgery and goes on holiday. He usually drives off in his natty two seater sports car, although in very recent years he has flown abroad. Of course the moment he leaves home the clouds burst, the roads are blocked by overturned Chester-Perry vehicles and his holiday hotels burn down, blow up or just subside gracefully into a heap of rubble.
His chosen resorts are the obscure British seaside towns of Mudsea and Stoneybeach. Or their Spanish equivalents. He used to go to smaller hotels such as the Hotel Westerberry, (source of gastronomic ideas for Mr. Gordon Blue) but now favours the upmarket hotel known, curiously, as Funboys sur la Plage.
Bristow takes modest holidays. He makes great play of going scuba diving, hang gliding and water skiing but in fact what he does is to lie on the beach, mooch aimlessly round the town and take interminable photographs of the sands, the gardens, the flower clock and the sea walls. If he can find a captive audience then he is very happy - but they will probably not be - strip 5214.He likes to look through the giant telescope in order to check that Jones is in the office. He may bounce up and down on the high diving board - to the awe and respect of the crowd - to see if he can make out the top of the C-P building on the horizon. One on trip he enjoys a brief moment of fame by winning the giant teddy bear in the bingo competition one night to discover everyone pointing him out on the esplanade the next day. Sometimes he will befriend an old sea salt and listen to his spellbinding tales of storms, shipwreck and pirates until, inevitably "But to my mind, me hearties, the most terrible of all was the Great Tea Trolley Disaster of ‘67".
When on holiday it is obligatory to send a postcard to the office, addressed to "Dear Slaves" and saying how wonderful it is to be away from the treadmill. The worst thing about returning is to get back before the postcard. Once back, it is essential to bore everyone with holiday photos strip 4966. However the clerks do show keen interest the year that Bristow's holiday co-incides with the girl in the orange bikini.
The next worst thing about coming back is to find that your colleagues have piled up all the work in your in-tray that in theory they should have done on your behalf while you were away. Close to this is when several hundred people phone you at the same time, having been assured by your colleagues that you will be free. Still, once your colleagues go on holiday then you can do the same to them.
