Holiday From Hell (Part 2)

The water continued to pour. I leapt from the bath and grabbed every towel I could lay my hands on, stuffing them frantically into the hole. The force of the water either pushed them straight out again or they were saturated instantly.  I yelled to GD, told her to get in there right away. She was half asleep but when she saw the torrent she was horrified. I told her to go for help. She replied that there was no way she was going to be seen in the hall or in the foyer with curlers in her hair and a white face mask on. I pointed out that I could hardly go, being in the nude as I was. I told her to ring for help. She went to the telephone and I could hear her voice rising as she was obviously getting nowhere. She came back saying she could not make head nor tail of what the person on the main desk was saying.

I told her to take my place, to keep wringing the towels out and trying to stem the flood. I knew it was impossible. When you are in a panic, you often do not notice that you have neglected little things. We had neglected to take the plug out of the bath and the water was rising fast. To this day I still do not know why neither of us took any notice of it. Looking back, I do not think taking the plug out would have made a great deal of difference such was the force and the amount of the water. By the time GD took my place the water in the tub was up to knee level.

~ me in Spain the previous year (that was a lovely holiday)

I was soaking wet of course. Not wanting to waste time I just threw on a top and shorts and took off down the hallway like the hounds of hell were after me, not even caring about the fact that my clothes were clinging to my wet body. There was nobody around. Everyone was having a siesta. I hurtled down the stairs and into the foyer. It was deserted. Where was the hotel manager or his wife? At the reception desk sat an aged and rumpled looking Spaniard, he looked to me as though he was about ninety. I could only assume that he was a father or father- in- law. I raced up to him. He looked up and saw me. He mouth broke in a huge grin showing missing andblackened teeth as he slowly eyed me up and down. I only knew a few words of Spanish but I did not know the word for help or emergency. I pointed wildly back in the direction of our room. "Water, water," I screamed at him. He shook his head. No comprende. I did the only thing I could think of, I grabbed him by the arm and tried to yank him from his chair to get him to follow me. He beamed even wider. He must have thought his Birthday had come! He put his hand on my bum - I thrust it away, he then tried to put his arm around my waist, I knocked it aside, stamped my foot and yelled at him. He shrugged his shoulders and put out his arms, clearing indicating that he did not know what I wanted.

Leaving him I sped back to our room, the water was over the sides of the bath and trickling down the step into our room. GD had given up all attempts to stop it. Instead she was sitting on the bed crying, her face mask so cracked and streaked with tears that it look like a river bed after a severe and prolonged drought. I lost my temper with her. I told her to get up off her backside and do something positive, like start bailing the water out of the window - a difficult job as we only had two glasses. I then suggested she go down and try to get help again. Once more she refused.

Suddenly I remembered the Spanish word for water. I got on the telephone and when a voice answered I screamed !"Aqua Aqua" down the phone and gave the room number only hoping that the ancient senor would know English numbers and be able to work out which room we were in.

By this time our suitcases, which were stored under our beds, had begun to float and water was seeping out under our door and into the hallway. Afterwards I realised I should have tried knocking on some doors to awaken any sleeping residents and ask them to help but it all seemed to happen so fast, everything was in a blur.

We picked up our cases and put them out on the balcony(another step up) along with our shoes and then resorted to trying to mop some of the water up with our clothes, dashing backwards and forwards onto the balcony to wring them out. It seemed that ages passed by but it could only have been a few minutes when there came a knock on the door. Thank God, I thought, help has arrived. I flung the door open. There was our decrepit Spaniard with a glass of water in his hand! "Aqua senorita" he said with a leering smile as he tried to hand the glass to me presuming that my attack on him and my frantic phone call had been a request for a drink!  He must have been near blind as well. How had he not noticed that water that was now trickling ever faster down the corridor? Without taking the glass I pointed to the floor. "No, no, aqua" I said at the top of my voice. He glanced down. It must have shocked him badly because he promptly dropped the glass which shattered and added even more water to the miniature river. So now we had a flood and broken glass everywhere as well.

He hurried off down the corridor as fast as his bandy old legs would carry him, flapping his arms and talking to himself and thankfully soon came back with the hotel manager. He was aghast and I think at first angry with us for causing all this havoc. With him and the old man arguing loudly in Spanish, doors soon began to open and bleary eyed guests started to emerge. When they saw the problem, it was all hands to the pump so to speak, everyone pitched in, a plumber was summoned and the cascade dealt with. When the manager saw the hole in the wall he was full of grovelling apology, he could not do enough.

We spent the rest of that day trying to dry our clothes. Of course, GD's parents blamed me, after all I had pulled the fixture of the wall!  We then had to put up with jokes from other holidaymakers. When Carlo asked me at dinner that evening  if I wanted water with my meal, everyone broke into gales of laughter.

The next day I went down with Montezuma’s revenge and .................. the rains came.

To be continued next time