There was a guy I used to work with called Des. I don’t know
whether it was short for Desmond or desperate. But that is only slightly
relevant to the story. Des lived with his wife and his mother-in-law. Besides
all the obvious and usual jokes, this was not an ideal situation for Des. He
did not get on with his mother-in-law all that well and each day he used to
come into work with various stories and horrors of his life at home.
Most of the time we took these with a pinch of salt but
there is one happenstance I know to be true and maybe is indicative of life
that Des had to live.
One day Des came into work and he actually looked happy for
once. The reason for this sudden onset of enjoyment was that he had managed to
book a holiday. OK, as well as for him and his wife, it also included his
mother-in-law, being the only way to persuade his wife to allow him to book it.
It was a bit of a victory for him as it was difficult and almost impossible to
get his mother-in-law to go anywhere, let alone on a holiday.
He had booked a canal boat holiday on a traditional
narrowboat. A real traditional narrowboat, as it was not diesel powered but horse-drawn
in the same manner as when the canals were first built. A week of quiet
meandering through the countryside just watching the world go silently by.
As the months turned to weeks Des’s anticipation remained
constantly buoyant. His whole being, it seemed, was focused on this one single
marvellous event in his life.
Then one day, a couple of weeks before the holiday was due
to commence, he came into work with such a manner of sadness and anger it was a
shock, even to us. Apparently, unbeknownst to him his mother-in-law had
cancelled the holiday. The reason she gave was cruelty to animals. Apparently,
she had failed to grasp what a going on a horse-drawn narrowboat entailed.
She thought it was cruel to make a horse swim and tow boats
as well.
You couldn’t make this up.
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