OSCAR GOES TO AUSTRIA

I've just returned from the land of mountains myself.

It was his doctor who put Oscar in the mind of having a relaxing holiday.

“You’re run down, Oscar,” he said, “and at your age, in your seventies, the last thing you want is to be run down.”

“Is there a tonic for it?” asked Oscar anxiously, “I’ve tried aspirin but it doesn’t seem to make me feel much better. I can’t seem to concentrate, and I don’t sleep well…”

“Aspirin won’t do one thing to make you feel better. No, sir, you won’t find relief in a bottle of pills. And in all honesty there isn’t much I can prescribe. Look, you’re retired, you live on your own, you do a bit of gardening and you go to bed at silly o’clock. If it was me who was suffering I’d prescribe a holiday, but you don’t get those on the NHS.”

“I don’t like flying…” moaned Oscar, “especially these days with so much paperwork to worry about, and all the new regulations which i don’t understand.”

Doctor Graves smiled at him. “I don’t know much about that,” he said, “but there are alternatives to flying. Try taking a coach. There’s even a first class outfit local to us, and they go all over Europe, where you might find a change of air as good as any tonic you think that you want”

Oscar, equipped with this new insight into what the doctor thought might be wrong with him, went to his local the “Magpie’s Nest”, a pleasant enough hostelry, for a drop of well needed alcoholic relief.

“You’re looking as if you’re staring into the eyes of the grim reaper.” Sandra, the vivacious barmaid, interrupted his thoughts with an accurate assessment of what she saw when she looked at him.

“I’ve seen Doctor Graves,” he replied sadly, “and he said aspirin won’t put me right.”

“Why? What’s wrong, Oscar?” Sandra asked, a troubled light in her eyes. She may have been in her late fifties but she did know how to perk customers up if they seemed to be on the down side of life.

“He said that I’m run down and ought to take a holiday,” he moaned in reply.

“I’m off on holiday next week,” smiled Sandra, “my brother was coming too but he’s had to back out. Work, it is, they can’t manage without him!”

“Anywhere nice?” he asked, not really curious but out of politeness.

“Austria,” she told him, “it’s a lovely country with lots to see. And by coach too, so we get to see so much on the way.”

“The furthest I’ve ever been on a bus is Skegness, and that was an awfully long way,” he said, “I couldn’t cope with what you seem to like.”

“Each to his own,” she smiled, and moved off to serve another customer.

On the way home, and the day had turned grey with the threat of rain as witness a few odd drops that splashed on his head as he walked slowly along, Sandra caught him up.

“Your doctor’s probably right,” she said, reaching him and placing one hand on his shoulder, not that he really needed slowing down. “Why don’t you think of taking his advice? That’s what he’s there for! And some places don’t have so much rain as we’re getting!”

“I don’t like buses and I refuse to fly,” he said, shaking himself free.

“Well, you ought to think about it, and if you’ve got a passport I know where there’s a place going free on the coach to Austria only next week!”

“It’s me and buses,” he muttered.

“Modern coaches are a world away from old fashioned charabancs!” she said with a laugh, “they’ve even got a loo!”

“And it’s a long way for a bloke of my age,” he added.

“I’ll tell you one thing, Oscar, you won’t be the oldest person on the coach if you agree to come. And the bonus is you’ll have me to sit next to!”

By the time he’d reached home, and he lived only a few doors away from Sandra so she was there all the way, he agreed to think about it. And that meant that she knew she’d found a companion for what promised to be a long ride to the middle of Europe. And anyway, she liked Oscar. He never drank too much when she was behind the bar and always had a pleasant word for her if they passed each other on the street.

And at the time the coach was due to depart from the local coach depot, Oscar was waiting there with her, his suitcase by his side, and a flash modern coach ablaze with lights was pulling in. It was still fairly dark. This holiday, it seemed started early.

“I’ve seen to all the paperwork and changed the name from my brother to you,” she whispered, “have you got your passport?”

“You said,” he mumbled.

The first part of the holiday was through England, down the M1 and round the M25 until they were on the road to Dover. There were stops at service stations every two hours or so, and he started getting to know some of the other passengers, many of whom seemed, to his surprise, to be even older than him.

After having passports checked by both French and British officials, Oscar found himself sitting on a coach that was slowly being parked on the deck of a ferry, and then being helped towards a lift, which took him to a passenger deck.

He might have been, as he often put it, getting on in years, but this was the first time he’d been to sea. On his rare excursions abroad he’d always flown, and this experience was turning out to be more soothing than any flight of the past had been what with all the scurrying at airports.

The first thing he noticed when the coach was on the road again was it seemed to be zooming down the wrong side of a broad road that was nowhere near as cluttered with traffic as the roads back on the British side of the channel had been.

“This all very pleasant,” he murmured to Sandra, whose seat was next to his and his was where her brother’s would have been hade he not been obliged to cancel.

“Grass is still green and fields are stilll fields,” she smiled, “but somehow there’s something a tiny bit different about French fields.

“I’ve never looked at it like that,” he replied, “but then, I’ve never had this perspective, through a coach window.”

The day was getting late by the time they edged out of France and into Germany, where they were due to have an overnight stay in a lovely hotel where they were welcomed and offered a fruit juice as a welcoming drink.

It was there they had an evening meal and gathered in a bar for what Oscar thought was a quite expensive drop of beer which came in a quantity he wasn’t familiar with.

But it was really very pleasant and quite to his taste.

TO BE CONTINUED

© Peter Rogerson 06.07.22