A steady flow of sugary drinks and several doses of aspirin helped me recover from a great night at Travel Weekly’s Southwest Ball this week.
Held at the Bristol Marriott City Centre, the evening was a glamorous affair and I, along with Travel Weekly reporter Edward Robertson, had the unenviable task of judging the best dressed women.
With Ed acting Gok Wan to my Trinny, we struggled to pick the best as the ladies had really gone to town, but we managed without grabbing anyone’s bosom or suggesting they parade around the nearest shopping mall in the altogether.
That task executed, I sat down to dinner with Tracy and Ian McFall of Accessible Travel in Bath and Diane Denny, director of Someone2travelwith.
I think Diane must have been wearing her lucky pants, as no sooner had she won the Most Innovative Agency award, than her donation envelope was drawn from the hat and she’d won two business-class tickets to anywhere on the Lufthansa network.
I decided to take more care when getting dressed. Clearly, the underwear strategy works.
One other person who had an issue getting dressed was Miles Morgan of Miles Morgan Travel. As he’d unpacked his gear ready to get dressed for the evening, he noticed that his wife had very carefully removed the stud buttons from his dress shirt before washing it, but had failed to replace them.
Panicking that he might end up sitting down to dinner with nothing more than his chest hair to protect him from the elements, he dashed into town to buy a new shirt. Hurrah for late-night shopping!
After a sumptuous meal with enough wine to blow my units for a fortnight, the dancing started. Those energetic enough made their way to the floor, while others lounged at their tables or, as in the case of Sarah Jane Barnet of Travel 2/4, loitered without intent in the loos.
She’d gone to powder her nose and, as the cubicle door slammed shut, was filled with a fear that too soon was realised: the lock had frozen or jammed or broken or something. Whatever it had done, there was no budging it and, while the revellers partied on, Sarah Jane was left shouting and banging on the loo door.
Helpful women visiting the ladies did their best but, defeated, went to reception to seek help. The reception staff proved ineffective in their rescue bid and eventually it fell to the maintenance man to release her. Relieved (in every sense), she fled to the dance floor.
“Was he a burly, capable hunk, your rescuer?” I asked her.
“I don’t know,” she replied, laughing, “in my rush to get out, I forgot to look!”
“I’m glad you can laugh about it,” I said.
“It’s a good job I got stuck in there the right side of a few drinks,” Sarah Jane replied, “mind you, if it had been the olden days, I’d have just lit a cigarette, set the fire alarms off and been thrown over the shoulder of a gorgeous fireman.”
So much for the nanny state.
The evening ended with Miles gathering up as many balloons as he could get his hands on for his children and doing a pretty supercalifragilisticexpialidocious impression of Mary Poppins.
The next morning, however, he could be found anxiously asking those at breakfast with him whether it’s an offence to impede one’s rear view with balloons. I hope someone reassured him that that was just a load of hot air.
A birthday dampener
Back in the office I spent a great deal of time sourcing a holiday for a lady seeking a birthday trip to Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
After much manoeuvring, I found something that ticked all the right boxes and phoned her back with the news. I could tell however, from the way she answered, that all was not well.
“Oh, hello,” she said, “I was going to ring you to tell you that we can’t afford the holiday now. We’ve got a leak in the conservatory.
“My husband says the repairs to the conservatory will be my present instead,” she said.
“Oh, we can’t have that,” I replied, “not when it’s a special birthday. Tell him to stick his finger in the hole while you go on your holiday.”
The phone fell silent.
Maureen Hill works at Travel Angels, Gillingham, Dorset