A Suitcase Full of Pink Pearls

By Fil Bufalo

Of course, I’d shied away from traveling to Croatia! Why embrace the unknown with Venice, Nice, Rome, and Constantinople calling? I’d heard whisperings of a city dubbed the ‘Pearl of the Adriatic’ but had little idea where that soul-stirring nirvana might have been located. You can imagine my surprise and delight, when I was invited to accompany five friends and their two young sons to Dubrovnik, Croatia, for a five-day stint in the scorching Balkan sun.

Words cannot express that first glimpsing of the red-roofed, white-walled, brilliant-blue -sea-skirted city when our sleek, silver, chauffeur-driven van tumbled into town from the brooding, cobalt-crusted Dubrovnik mountains.

Lord Byron had it right: Heaven on Earth!

The following five days for our ‘party of eight’ included beaches, swimming pools, ‘Old Town’ treasures, Wall-walks, Croatian food to die for, and best of all – a delightful ‘Game of Thrones’ tour, which had two little boys searching every nook and cranny on the ‘Kings landing’ for that elusive Iron Throne. Who’s never wanted to play kings or queens?

So you’ll be joining us on this pink-pearler tour in one of the world’s most Instagram-able spots? Thought so!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035816231

Fil Bufalo

Fil Bufalo has been writing forever, but only recently taken up writing in a genre she is finding hard to resist. Humorous travel narrative writing. Fil is a proud Australian, and she loves nothing more than to travel overseas, distributing tokens of Australian memorabilia to people all over the world. Fil dabbles in art, mosaics, gardening, and poetry writing. She is an extrovert who loves to have a chat with anyone who cares to listen. Lastly, Fil loves children and the ocean. In that order.

Book preview

About the Author

Fil Bufalo has been writing forever, but only recently taken up writing in a genre she is finding hard to resist. Humorous travel narrative writing. Fil is a proud Australian, and she loves nothing more than to travel overseas, distributing tokens of Australian memorabilia to people all over the world. Fil dabbles in art, mosaics, gardening, and poetry writing. She is an extrovert who loves to have a chat with anyone who cares to listen. Lastly, Fil loves children and the ocean. In that order.

Dedication

Trish, John, Joan and Terry—all four of whom had a hand in my writing. Oh, and my heavenly mentor—Mum. Always Mum!

Copyright Information ©

Fil Bufalo 2024

The right of Fil Bufalo to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The story, experiences, and words are the author’s alone.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035816224 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035816231 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

Thank you to my publishers. Super job on the ‘Suitcase’ series, Pink Pearls included. Thank you!

Chapter 1

Where We’d Come From!

The funny thing was—I had not the slightest idea of the route we’d just flown. The only two place-names I had to work with were Warsaw and Croatia. And the only two useless slithers of information whirring around in my head were: take-off and landing. To be fair to myself, I’d been wedged in an overheated crevice beside my best friend’s husband—Doug for three (best forgotten) hours—the tiny portal-window so fogged up, and so far away from my aisle seat, that I could have been anywhere. Maybe we’d made no progress whatsoever! A mere, record-breaking circling of the ‘Fryderyk Chopin’ tarmac, and then the silent sneaking in of a clandestine, coveted landing when the coast was clear.

Or when it was time for lunch. Whatever came first!

Yes. There had been a few murmurings from the captain and his off-sider, but initially, the announcements had been in Polish with no back-up English translation, so again, I couldn’t have been blamed for not speaking up, and enquiring of the nun seated directly across the aisle from me, as to our exact whereabouts. Not that I’d have expected her to come up with any sort of plausible explanation. More than likely, the woman ‘married to God’ would’ve replied something like, ‘halfway between heaven and hell’. Perfect nun-speak! (She might just have been correct with the ‘Hel’ reference, as we’d almost made it to Hel (yes, a real place on the world map) the day before yesterday, when a group of us had been in the far north of Poland on a five-day seaside holiday, following a momentous wedding in the Polish capital.

Actually, one of us had made it to Hel. Pat, my friend Jenna’s ninety-something-year-old mother, had spent a sweltering day on the Hel peninsula in the far north of Poland, and she’d made sure we’d all heard how she’d fared. In her own words, it had been ‘pretty darn hot, and that’s all I’ll have to say about the place’. For an Australian nonagenarian with, at a conservative estimate, over 1000 days of heatwaves under her belt—the statement constituted high praise indeed. One of her younger great-grandchildren had innocently asked her what’d been so special about her daytrip to Hel, and once again Pat had come up with the wry response, You know, Tilly, I didn’t see a soul I knew there. They must all have been in heaven for the day! And then there was the cryptic reference to ten of us having just spent the last three days in ‘heaven’ aka ‘Sopot’ North Poland.

To set the scene.

I was on a fairly reputable aircraft (in terms of European aviation carriers) bound for Dubrovnik, Croatia, with three of my good friends—married couple Jenna and Doug, and Jenna’s mother, Patricia. Jennifer (Jenna) was a close teacher friend of mine, and the four of us were on the tail-end of a ten-day holiday in Poland. The impetus for the trip? Jenna’s son, Aaron, had married a Polish girl, Justyna, a week ago today.

The wedding had been in wonderful-Warsaw, and we’d followed up the exhaustive festivities with a short, four-day stint in ‘Sopot’—Northern Poland, along with about half of the Aussie guests! We’d all flown from Australia to Poland for wedding, and were now on our way to Dubrovnik for a gander at where the ‘king’ had landed. (Not all the Aussies who’d been at the wedding were Dubrovnik-bound. Only 8 of us!).

The suggestion to spend five days at a resort in tourist-laden Dubrovnik had come from Jenna’s daughter Catherine and her husband Chris, both of whom were smitten with a television series entitled ‘Game of Thrones’. (And they weren’t alone in their sacral-king who’d happened to land in Dubrovnik-town hero-worshipping). I’d googled the famous place-name before we’d left Australia and had discovered that, of all the ‘Game of Thrones’ locations, ‘King’s Landing’ in Dubrovnik, Croatia, was ‘the most visited’.

It hadn’t all been smooth sailing trying to get takers for the Dubrovnik sojourn. From a possible thirty-five contenders, Catherine had triumphantly emerged with the 8 of us! Two of whom were children (her own)—under six. Of the remaining lucky-spot-prize takers—one was ninety. A ‘sprightly-ninety’ but nevertheless walking-stick-reliant. One was twenty years behind his nonagenarian mother-in-law, but similarly walking stick reliant, and the third—my friend Jenna—who had not been herself, health-wise, since having set foot on Polish soil almost two weeks ago.

Jenna was operating on one cylinder and waning by the day. A marvellous Polish doctor—a woman who’d gone over and above the call of duty to attend to Jenna in her sickbed in the beautiful, sunny, bedroom in the ‘Sopot Sheraton’ overlooking the Baltic-sea where Jenna had spent most of her three-day seaside sojourn, had confidently prescribed antibiotics. But, according to Jenna, the Polish pills had been practically useless. So, that was three of them out of the picture for the proposed expedition to ‘King’s Landing’ on the rocky Dubrovnik coast.

Which had left me! I was possibly Catherine and Chris’s best hope of a third pair of eyes to bear witness to the most spectacular event of the decade, but I was loathe to inform the over-enthusiastic ‘young-people’ that backing me would be worse than relying on the combined skills of the rejected motley trinity—Pat, Jenna and Doug. I was hopeless at climbing, fearful of incoming tides and heights, threatened by even the tiniest swarming school of fish, and downright allergic to trekking. I couldn’t even ‘ramble’ to save myself! What were they thinking, expecting me to come to the party? Not only that! I could have wriggled my way out of the whole Croatian trip, had I played my cards right. There were plenty of escape routes. I just hadn’t had the heart to have ‘piked it’ at the last minute, when it turned out I’d been included in the party of eight. (Jenna, Pat and Doug had finally agreed to join the party.)

So, here was I! Sat upright, in my glory, on a plane Croatia-bound. Totally in the dark about what to expect when we eventually landed. It’d been the same when I’d flown from London to Warsaw. A fumbling, floundering on my part. A state of complete and utter ignorance. Not a clue about Poland to save myself. Pure, unfiltered laziness in not having made the slightest effort to have unearthed anything at all about Poland—the country we had allegedly left behind three hours ago.

I am a repeat offender in so many ways. The leopard who finds it impossible to change her spots. The tagged and branded ‘crim’. The reluctant, reticent, retrophile refusing to ‘refresh’. Why did I imagine flying into Croatia would’ve been any different? To try and make myself feel better about arriving in another country about which I knew very little, I attempted playing the transference game. Shifted the focus from myself to what my travelling buddies might know about Croatia, and what one could realistically expect from a five-day holiday in the country. Did the others even know as much as I did? Was Doug aware that Croatia had the longest coastline of any European country, and that, even if he were to indulge his passion for swimming for the entire one hundred plus hours of our sojourn, he’d still come nowhere near to notching up a healthy quota of swims?

Swimming is big in Australia. Most of us live on the coast, and nearly everyone learns to swim at an early age. Seeing babies immersed—head-first into wide gushing, rushing rivers and our three mighty oceans—the Pacific, Indian and Southern—not to mention the Arafura and Coral seas in the far north of the country—is a common sight. It’s definitely sink or swim when it boils down to a day at the beach or riverside. With thousands of kilometres of jagged mainland coastline (not forgetting our picturesque Tasmanian Island), there is nothing like being prepared.

Sadly, too many adventurous beachcombers never return from a dip in the ocean. Having settled in Australia, from countries far and wide, I refer to those unfortunates claimed by treacherous rips—‘out of their depths’ so to speak, in the treacherous, voracious Australian waters. The only thing Doug loved more than swimming was ‘channel-surfing’ on his beloved 65-inch screen television, so I guess the ‘water theme’ remained. Doug may not have been a signed-up member of the Bondi icebergs (the only licensed winter swimming club in the world, all-Australian, and dating back to 1929) but he took his ‘exercising leisure pursuit’ very seriously. He’d once informed me that the only reason he hadn’t joined the famous Bondi swimming club or even the Brighton swimming club—closer to his home in Melbourne—was because he’d had reservations about being able to have met the stringent membership rules, whereby it was mandatory for swimmers to compete on three Sundays out of four for a period of five years. Rule 15B as it was known in the swimming world was just that little bit too taxing for Doug.

Besides which—who would take his mother-in law, Pat, to mass on the days he’d been competing? Doug had sensibly stuck to lapping, water-aerobics, and sitting in the sauna in his local swimming pool, giving iconic Australian clubs such as Bondi, Chelsea and Brighton a wide berth.

I could have shaken Doug awake and posed the ‘coastline of Croatia’ question directly, but he’d been fast asleep for the past hour—worn out from all the hype and excitement we’d generated at Chopin airport before we’d bid farewell to Warsaw. There’d been ‘an incident’, associated with our departure—to put it mildly. In a nutshell, Doug had left his insulin in his hotel room across the road from the airport (where the four of us—Pat, Jenna, Doug and I—had stayed overnight before today’s flight.) Consequently, Jenna had been compelled to race back through customs to retrieve the ‘lost goods’, and then to have declared the insulin when re-entering customs—only to be strip-searched because she was thought to have been ‘carrying dangerous goods’ not belonging to her.

According to Jenna, she’d tried in vain to reason with the Polish customs-officials. Pleaded with them to text-message or phone Doug (who’d been pacing ‘departure lounge 33G’ with his walking-stick, anxiously awaiting Jenna’s return) for confirmation that the necessary needles and vials were indeed his, and that yes, he did know Jenna. She happened to be his wife of forty-odd years! The whole incident had been an ordeal and a half, and I supposed Doug’s best coping mechanism was sleep.

Leaving Doug aside, I could also have questioned the other two sleeping beauties, slumbering peacefully two seats down from me in the plane. (I’d left my seat to visit the restrooms not long before, and had passed both Jenna and her mother reclining, eyes closed, presumably dead to the world.) Even if they’d been awake, I’d be willing to bet neither of them would’ve been able to have coughed up craggy Croatia as their special subject in a game of Mastermind. Or, more specifically, our intended arrival city.

The fairy-tale, walled metropolis of dazzling Dubrovnik, deep South, deep west, and more than deeply embossed with glistening gold sunshine and the beautiful, blue Adriatic Sea. Admittedly, the city had been the ‘name on everyone’s lips’ for the past decade, but should I have conducted one of my ‘hundred people surveys’ and quizzed a century of ‘soldiers-on-standby’ on where one might locate Dubrovnik on a world map, or even the country one might be visiting should Dubrovnik pop up on an itinerary—I’d probably be hard-pressed to unearth even a smattering of citizens with even ‘close to the correct’ answers.

We’d all heard of the place! Of course! Countless ears pricked up like dutiful dalmatian dogs whenever the name ‘Dubrovnik’ was mentioned. Oh, Dubrovnik you say? The place where Lord Byron and George Bernard Shaw spent the summer basking in the heat and cooling off in the Adriatic? That Dubrovnik, you mean? Abundant nodding and affirming at dinner parties and in trendy, hip cocktail bars, at the mere mention of the joint—but who actually knew where Dubrovnik rested, and why everyone wanted to ‘snap a ’selfie’ there?’ I decided to let all three of my travel buddies sleep it off.

It had been an ordeal alright, back at the airport. Had Doug discovered his life-saving needles were missing earlier on when we’d been twiddling our thumbs in the airport lounge awaiting the plane, things would have been so very different. Jenna would’ve had plenty of time to have zipped back to the hotel in search of lost treasure. Doug would also have had time on his side. Time to have shuffled back to customs-territory on his trusty mule (walking stick) and paced the bare, compact ‘boxing ring’ waiting for Jenna to show up with the insulin. He would then have been able to have successfully matched wedding rings with her, scooped up the counterfeit goods, and we’d have all lived happily ever after.

But life being life, that wasn’t how it’d happened. If there is—anywhere, anytime—to be a choice between chaos and calmness, chaos invariably comes up trumps. Time and time again we’re sucked into a vortex of chaos by making one wrong move. Doug’s (yet to be unravelled) fallacious move this morning, had been forgetfulness. Jenna’s—a lack of speed, and mine? To have left Jenna’s mother, Pat, sitting in the crammed, stuffy waiting-lounge with Doug, whilst I surrogated for him and raced down to the floodgates of customs. My moral imperative? To lend much needed support to Jenna, when she was inevitably detained at customs and forced to either ‘lay claim’ or leave the insulin behind. In my adrenalin-fed clogged head, two heads were always better than one.

I’d been halfway down the slender, linoleum tarmac when I’d realised I’d left my passport with Doug—a precautionary measure, had there have been any problems with the seating for the trip, and Doug had been required to account for all passengers in his party. Which would’ve been fair enough on the part of the airport officials, as both Pat and Doug had requested wheelchairs—neither of which had yet been sighted. As we’d made it to the departure lounge solely reliant on the pair’s respective walking sticks, it would’ve been safe to have assumed two shiny, sleek wheelchairs would not be making an appearance on this particular leg of the journey. Maybe Dubrovnik would come good as the wheelchair capital of Europe!

Even though it was a straight sprint back to the departure lounge where I’d left Pat and Doug to their own devices, it seemed to be taking ages to retrace my steps. Halfway along the course, I stopped to catch my breath, leaning breathlessly against one the walls to a Departure gate filled with what looked to be a woman’s basketball team. (Clues included a cluster of very tall, very thin, very young Polish girls, a stubby, little, bulldog-tank of a coach with a whistle, short cropped peroxide hair, and basketballs everywhere.)

The ‘team’ appeared to be waiting for a delayed plane, and weren’t wasting any practise-time sitting lolling around in airport departure lounges. Some bright spark had erected a portable basketball ring, and balls were being hurled at the ring at a fast and furious pace. All other passengers were an instant audience. Even little children were enthralled with the goings-on. I had to smile. It was quite the scene. I also had to look twice and pinch myself, as I couldn’t really believe what I was seeing.

Wedged in between two elderly gentlemen, cheering on the pop-up team, rising to her feet and cheering when goals were scored (observing authentic Polish spectator behaviour) was Pat! Yes, Pat! Jenna’s mother! Pat, Doug’s mother-in-law! Pat, my former dorm-mate from Warsaw in the dim, dark, past. (Ok, only last week but it felt like ages ago as I’d had a bedroom to myself for the past five days.) Surely, the woman could not have been Pat? I’d left the real Pat napping in her seat in our own departure lounge not ten minutes ago, and now here she was, propped up in ‘cheer-squad’ quarters cheering for Poland. It was Pat! I waited for a break in the play and raced over to her.

Pat, Pat! What are you doing here? This isn’t our Departure Lounge! We’re in ‘33G’. This is ‘27 C’. How did you end up here, and where’s Doug? Pat looked at me and blinked. Then blinked again, as if slowly recognising someone she hadn’t seen in years.

Hello. Oh it’s you, Fil. Did you come back? Where are Jenna and Doug? Oh, it’s an exciting match! She was praising up the goal scoring as if Michael Jordon or Magic Johnson were doubles-partners in a world championship right before her eyes. I refrained from commenting.

Pat, this isn’t our Departure lounge. Our lounge is back there! I pointed back up the corridor towards where I’d left her. Where’s Doug? Why did he leave you here? Was it because you were following me down to customs and couldn’t make it? My word choice may not have been ideal. I’d somehow managed to make it sound patronising, which hadn’t been my intention at all. I’d simply wanted to establish what was happening.

The situation was getting far more complicated as the seconds ticked by. All I could think of was Jenna having left, my having left, quite possibly Doug also having left, and Pat having wandered away from the lounge on a quest to locate the three of us. She’d probably waned after passing two or three departure lounges, only to find this sporty little oasis in departure lounge ‘27 C’. The basketball-banter had started up and she’d been trapped! A familiar formula.

Entrapment closely followed by forgetfulness equalled seating in a lounge full of passengers bound for New York city. Thank goodness I’d stopped for rest. Thank goodness I’d spotted Pat cheering. Pat, I think Doug may have abandoned you and tried to meet Jenna at customs. He was probably so worried they wouldn’t let her through with the insulin Do you want to come back to the lounge with me? We can get a drink on the way. Always does the trick, does the old promise of lubrication. Promise Pat drinks or chocolates and she was instantly putty in your hands.

I’d meant what I’d said. As far as I could work it out, Doug and Jenna must’ve already met up, so if I handled Pat, we’d be two-thirds of the way towards making the plane, complete with the insulin and all passengers. I quickly checked my watch and exhaled so loudly I managed to startle a woman breast-feeding her baby in a seat quite close to where I stood. I’d also disturbed the baby, who pulled away from the mother and began wailing. The woman glared at me as if to say, There…look what you’ve gone and done.

I smiled at the baby, ignored the irate woman and yanked Pat up out of her seat. Come on Pat, we’re gunna miss the plane if we don’t all hurry up, and then we’ll have to rebook for tomorrow, and stay another night at the airport hotel. Sweet sugar-coated spite is sometimes the sweetest of weaponry. Since Pat had complained non-stop all last night about the noisy planes when we’d been trying to sleep almost in the eye of the flight path. (I had to admit she’d been well within her rights to complain—being partially deaf, yet still able to clearly hear the tenacious, persistent droning.)

I nevertheless took undeserving delight in successfully shortcutting a potentially slow, tedious trudge back to our homeland lounge. Fearful of my threat, Pat found her feet in no time and minutes later, we were back in our corners in the correct departure lounge, praying for Doug and Jenna to turn up. Pat cheerfully suggested a decade of the rosary to help things along, but I categorically put my foot down. Pat, we have to be ready to jump on the plane, and how can we do that if we’re in the middle of a decade? We can save the rosary recitation for when the plane’s air-bound. You’ll probably get more takers at 36,000 feet in the air.

I was probably pushing my luck turning my back on religion, but I really wasn’t in the mood for chanting of any description. There’s a soul-stirring ‘REM’ song—‘Losing my religion’ with an accompanying clip of the lead singer weighed down with huge, white angel wings cavorting around a bare room. The lyrics had begun playing in my head. ‘That’s me in the corner…that’s me in the spotlight…losing my religion’.

Pacifist Pat eventually let it go, disposed of the rosary beads and fished out her book of prayers. Well, the least I can do is say some prayers that they’ll get back here in time. I’ll be very quiet. True to her word, Marta-Hari Pat pulled her hand-knitted scarf tightly up to her neck and began mumbling into the material. I had no idea which decade of the rosary she’d begun reciting, but I hoped it wasn’t all ten sorrowful mysteries—a prophetic legacy to her daughter and son-in-law lost to the clutches of Warsaw airport. It was all so darn dramatic—that rattling-off of the rosary.

As kids, we’d been traumatised into believing that we couldn’t talk, pull faces, or heaven forbid giggle during the rosary recitation. In the days of my childhood, we didn’t have anyone ding-donging our doorbell at teatime thrusting ergonomic brown bags of ‘Uber Eats’ towards us, and then pedalling away furiously in the blinding rain on a leg-powered bicycle with fifteen, gleaming gears, sat-nav, and a state of the art stainless steel pie-warmer on the back of the bike. The only home deliveries for us were essential groceries and statues.

Every week, Mr Graham would deliver two boxes of groceries, and every second month, Father O’Donoghue would stumble through our front door with his arms full. His bundle? A fairly substantial statue of ‘Our Lady’ which remained on our Australian ‘white-ghost gum’ mantlepiece for the duration of the week until Fr O’Donoghue returned to pick her up and moved her into recovery position, ensuring safe cartage to the next lucky family. I say ‘lucky’ with more than a wedge of tongue in my cheek. (More like a side of lamb laced with poison rosemary.)

There was nothing lucky about having a giant statue in your living room—stopping you from watching television or vegging out on the sofa. These life-like, paint-pealed statues had dreamy, distant eyes which never left your face, even if you tried to skive off into another room. We laugh about it now, but in those days, suppressing laughter was pure torture.

Attention everyone! Flight 367 to Dubrovnik is now ready for boarding. Please come forward if you require assistance getting onto the plane. I glanced at Pat, but she seemed not to have heard the announcement. We were on the cusp of deep water now. No Jenna. No Doug, and no passports. I watched a steady stream of passengers disappear through the doorway, presumably taking the twenty or so steps along the covered walkway to the plane. It was like a rising river in the lounge, and all too soon, Pat and I were the only two left. Still no Jenna nor Doug.

And then, it happened! A flurry of personage, a whooshing of a walking stick, and Jenna calling out triumphantly, We’re here! We’ve made it! We can get on the plane! It was one of those eureka moments when the crowd would normally break out into spontaneous applause. The drilling of the flag into unclaimed territory, the discovery of a two-hundred-year-old shipwreck, or the appearance of Hayley’s comet in the night sky.

But there was nothing! No fanfare, no applause, no congratulatory accolades. Nobody saying anything. Mainly because Pat and I were the only two left standing in the departure lounge, and because we were so stunned and surprised at the welcome intrusion that we were left speechless. Jenna seemed not to notice our non-reactions. Hurry, hurry, it looks like we’re the last lot to get on the plane. Here’s your passport, Fil, and yours is here too, mum! Now, how’s your running style?

That was how we came to be the last four passengers to fumble our way past the rest of the seated, belted captives on the Polish plane about to take off from a Polish airport bound for Dubrovnik. It had all come together in the end. The insulin had been retrieved, Jenna redressed, Doug revived and Pat reinstated. We’d made it onto the plane and—thanks to the perfectly placid disposition of most of the Polish holiday makers already seated—were welcomed with open arms. One big happy family of tourists headed for the sunny Croatian coast.

Chapter 2

On the Plane

People were waking up slowly. For the past hour or so, it had been like sitting amongst a crowd of sleeping beauties. Some of them not so easy on the eye, but with their eyes closed and heads bent, it was difficult to comment on their appearances. All I knew was that the harder I’d tried to sleep, the more ‘wide awake’ I’d felt. There’d been little noise, save the soft gentle purring of the engine—comforting, if not a little irritating—like a softly ticking clock, or someone snoring within ‘too close for comfort’ proximity. Not that I would’ve wanted it to have been totally silent, as that would’ve triggered alarm bells—as opposed to the comforting assurance of the engine ploughing through the clouds.

Regardless, all that had changed in the last five minutes. ‘There was movement at the station for the word had gotten around…’ The words to the famous Australian bush poem, ‘The Man from Snowy River’, started up in my head.

It was always the same with me whenever I heard or saw something out of the ordinary happening. Immediate association with a song, poem, book title or breath-taking place. Movement, especially busy bustle, made me think of how and why people moved. Pace and direction—which led me onto contemplating destinations—real or desired. At least, most people would have had some idea where they were headed. Unlike our clueless party of four—Jenna, Doug, myself and Pat. All four of us had fallen heavily into the category of ‘tourists with not the foggiest idea of where they’d end up.’ Outcome unknown!

The slightly glamorous title ‘Dubrovnik’ was about it. Thinking laterally, we were on a mystery flight to a mystery coastal destination. It would be so wonderful to see the Adriatic. So many times, I’d finger-traced the path of the Adriatic Sea stretching out from my father’s hometown of Bari on my well-worn world atlas.

Had I been more observant, I might’ve realised that Dubrovnik sat fair and square across the sparkling waters from Bari, and that I might even have hopped on a ferry from the port of Brindisi and ended up there. Not having known of Dubrovnik’s existence in those days surely let me off the hook. Again, it was a question of my only knowing 2 place names which lay across the blue waters from Italy’s east coast. Albania and Yugoslavia. I know! Yugoslavia no more, but the name ‘Yugoslavia’ meant something to me.

This morning I’d be adding a name third to my list. Bring on Dubrovnik. The mystery was about to be solved. Would all passengers kindly fasten seatbelts and ensure tray-tables are in an upright position. Please draw-up your blind if you’ve drawn it during the flight. The air-hostess’s reference to drawing one’s blind during a flight reminded me of the time when Jenna’s then three-year-old grandson, Fox (who would be joining us later today in Dubrovnik with his parents and younger brother Raffy) had mistakenly thought the air-hostess had asked people to ‘draw’ on the blinds.

He’d been horrified at the thought, as so many, many times in his short life, punishment and a good talking to had been the sad and sorry results of his having taken his textas, coloured pencils and his mother’s lipsticks and eyeliners to walls, wardrobes, tables and multiple other surfaces. And here was someone urging adults to draw on the blinds. Incredible! The request just hadn’t made any sense to Fox. His parents, Catherine and Chris, had gotten a good laugh out of the situation, as did their friends and gossip-hungry Facebook, Instagram and TikTok followers.

Within five minutes, we were all settled and ready for landing. I still couldn’t see out the window, but judging by the ‘oohs and ahs’ from plenty of other window-hogging passengers, we were notching up some pretty spectacular scenery. Maybe mountains, maybe rivers, maybe the sea? Last week, when I’d flown solo from London to Warsaw, I’d happily scored a window seat, and as the plane had descended upon the Polish capital, had watched the miniscule streak of a river wending along for miles as we got closer and closer to the city. Starting off as a ‘Google Earth’ streak across green farming fields, the river had become bigger and bigger, and wider and wider, until we’d turned north towards the airport and had left it behind.

It was somewhat disappointing not to be able to gaze out the window this morning, but I could live with the disappointment, as the next thing I heard was the thud of the plane wheels hitting the tarmac and the squelching of brakes as we slowed down to a halt. We were down. ‘Down, down, deeper and down’.

Chapter 3

Limo/Van to the Resort

An hour later, the landscape had changed dramatically. Instead of being belted-up in solitary confinement in a plane, we had moved up the scale of ‘comfort travel’ to the luxurious, plush leather seats of a minivan, fit for kings and queens of travel. The minibus had been parked directly outside the airport, and after exchanging pleasantries with the driver (who spoke perfect English),