Monday 23 August 2010

Horace and Hector

Bit of background first. There are rules to going on holiday
1. no newspapers except those local to where you are on holiday.
2 No radio
3. No TV
4. Everyone has a nickname that is just for the holidays

Mr M is always Horace when we go on holiday and I am always Hector. This started not long after we first met - August 1980 - at my cousin's wedding. That is a story in itself but not one I want to tell online. Anyhow, I was recently divorced with three teeenage children and not looking for entanglements of any sort.

So less than three weeks later we took my three children for a weekend at the seaside. They discovered what it was like to be treated as adults by a man who didn't shout or hit. I discovered how to laugh out loud without fear and we all discovered how to play the hungry Horace video arcade game. I was so relaxed that I kept falling asleep so Mr M called me tired old Hector and then he ate a cornish pasty and my daughter said he munched it just like the yellow face munched the dots in the hungry Horace game.
I was relieved because until then I was called Tattoo because that was the character from Fantasy Island that kept saying "The Plane, boss, the plane" simply because I had once been very excited when passing Manchester airport on the M6.
Ever since that holiday we have kept our nicknames and every scrap album of our holidays has been titled "Horace and Hector..........."
It is much easier to write the holiday journal and talk about Hector throwing a wobbly because the car park entrance looked like a cave than to say that "I had a panic attack" so When we go on holiday he is Horace and still munches the occasional pasty just like the yellow head in the game and I am tired old Hector who falls asleep with the greatest of ease.

2 comments:

humel said...

This is a fabulous story :-) Have you scrapped it as a story in its own right? It deserves its own page :-)

Ladkyis said...

Never really thought about it - I think it might be in the album I did for that year, just a brief note I think. I haven't looked at that album for a couple of years now so I will have to get it down from the shelf - something else to go on the list for my son-in-law to do for me