Saga bores

I SHOULD HAVE known. Now that the kitchen is up and running, My Good Lady has started to press for a holiday – we are overdue for one, I suppose.

Our proposed trip to Malaysia has had to be put on hold due to financial constraints and, of course, the cost of the new kitchen.

So, it’s to be Europe, then. But where? It’s a big place. Somewhere warm would be nice. The south of France? We’ve been there three times now, including last year. Portugal, then? We’ve been given favourable reports, but somehow, flicking through the Saga brochure, it fails to excite. Italy perhaps?

Yes, Italy quite appeals. Mountains, lakes, the sea, good food, great wine… This should do us very nicely, thank you.

Not with Saga, though, not again. I live in dread of the Saga bore.

Don’t get me wrong, Saga do provide some great value holidays to a vast range of destinations, and most of the people who go on their trips are perfectly civil and agreeable folks.

However, you do get the infamous Saga bores, often solo travellers who have been everywhere and to whom anywhere is better than where they are now – and about which they go on endlessly…

Often, they are single women of a certain age, women who have lost their partners and who are hungry for – usually male – companionship.

Failing to find one such, they latch onto anyone who gives them a friendly smile – in other words, almost inevitably, to MGL and me.

Two such women attached themselves to us when we went to Tenerife a few years ago, and they nearly put a blight on our whole holiday. Every time they saw us they made a beeline for us, proprietarily assuming that we belonged to them for the duration of the stay.

No way of getting rid of them, short of being deliberately rude – and the bad feelings such rudeness usually brings in its wake.

We had to resort to hiring a car, to get away from the rest of the group, staying out for as much of the day as possible, and returning late in the hope that by the time we got into dinner, they would have already dined and left.

Such people can spoil your holiday as effectively as a heat rash or a tummy gyp.