WITH winter on the horizon my friend phoned me excited that our sunshine break was almost here. 

“One more day Janice and we are off,” Mae enthused.

“I cannae wait.”

And to be fair, neither could I.

“Now look after yourselves,” my cautious daughter warned.

“You know what the pair of you are like.”

Mae and I looked vacantly at each other because in our minds, most of the bizarre happenings that befall us are usually accidental or out of our control.

Arriving in Tenerife, I couldn’t help but notice how my pal (who couldn’t speak a word of Spanish), suddenly adopted her own version of the language. 

“Ola senior,” she waved at the bus driver.

“This bus for us?”

“You take us to hotel?”

Unfortunately Mae’s version of Spanish, accompanied by many hand gestures, consisted purely of missing out odd words. 

A couple of days into the holiday we decided to do some shopping in the large cool shopping mall. 

Mesmerised by the glitz of the jewellery in a shop window, Mae bent down to look at the array of watches and for some unknown reason didn’t see the thick glass window and headed butted it with full force.

Whack, the thud was so loud that a young couple inside the shop got such a fright that they jumped back startled wondering where on earth this thudding noise had come from.

“Ola sorry,” Mae gestured through the window with one hand while holding the large red egg on her head with the other.

“Are you OK, Mae?”  I was concerned as my pal was swaying slightly.

“Your eyes look a bit blurry.” 

“How did I manage to head butt a window?” she asked.

“No idea Mae, but I’ve never seen anyone whack off a window like that before.”

I wasn’t quite convinced my pal was OK but somehow the need to shop was greater than Mae’s self-inflicted accident and we carried on shopping.

However, as she tried to focus on a price tag she became concerned.

“I think you might be right Janice,” she confessed.

“My right eye is very blurry.”

And I concluded that perhaps she had knocked her right contact lens out with the force of whacking her head against the solid window.

Regardless of Mae’s blurry vision, the pair of us headed out for the night to enjoy ourselves, and all was well until later on when we attempted to get back into our hotel complex.

“The main door’s locked because it’s so late,” my pal had cleverly deduced.

“We better head to the side door.”

But that seemed locked too.

“Perhaps we need to swipe in somewhere with our room cards,” I suggested.

Like one of the nodding dogs you see in the back of cars, Mae nodded while rummaging frantically in her handbag for her room key.

“There, Mae.” I pointed to a large black pole by the front door.

“That’s where you swipe the card to get us in.”

But no matter how many times she swiped and swiped her card, the glass doors wouldn’t open.

Attempting another swipe, Mae’s room key suddenly disappeared inside the black pole and that’s when the pair of us started arguing.

“You and those blurry eyes,” I snapped.

“It wasn’t my blinkin fault,” Mae retaliated.

Next minute, a handsome hotel security man appeared with some colleagues.

“Ladies, ladies, what you trying to do?”

“We need to get into hotel,” Mae stated the obvious.

“And room card not working.”

Before he could get a word in.

“We swipe and we swipe.” Mae’s version of Spanish had returned.

“But card not working.”

The Spaniard was holding his sides with laughter.

“The door is already open.”

“Eh?” we both stared at the large open glass door which we hadn’t noticed.

“And.” ……… he continued.

“You were trying to swipe in with the cigarette pole.”

“Cigarette pole?”

“What’s he on about Janice?” Mae was as confused as me.

And sure enough, when we studied the pole it was indeed for smokers to stub out their cigarettes before entering the hotel.

We both turned to the Spaniard and his colleagues.

“You must have been watching us for ages trying to swipe in with the cigarette pole and you never said anything.”

“It’s the funniest thing we have ever seen.” He and his mates were in hysterics.

“We couldn’t wait to see what you did next.”

And sure enough, the staff had been watching us on CCTV camera swiping our door cards in a giant ash tray in an attempt to get in a door which, by the way, was already open!

“Ladies, we will use this as part of our staff training video.” He smirked.

And by the way, Mae’s blurry vision disappeared the next morning when she discovered that she had put two lenses in, one on top of the other, in her right eye which was probably the reason she head butted the shop window!