Holiday horrors

This appears to be a rite of passage for teenagers once they finish their A-levels nowadays. Where we were happy with a celebration drink in our local pub, they fly off to Spain, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey for a week of festivities.

Everyone has been asking me if I’ve ever watched any of those Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents reality TV shows, where mums and dads secretly follow their sons and daughter around on their first holiday away with friends.

It’s like a rather creepy natural history series where the cameras stalk the young to study their behaviour in the wild.

But I have no desire to think about, let alone observe, what they’re doing.

I made the mistake of watching a documentary about a place called Sunny Beach in Bulgaria, where Patrick’s two older brothers had been on holiday with their friends.

I had imagined them relaxing in a picturesque resort, with blue skies, azure sea and golden sands. But all I saw in this TV show were shots of blood-stained faces, pavements coated in layers of teenage vomit and ambulances carting those who needed stomachs pumped or heads stitched off to hospital.

I also learned that beer only cost 40p a pint and you could get ten shots of tequila for £4.40. Thankfully, my boys had arrived safely home by the time I saw the programme. And they assured me, of course, that it wasn’t like that at all.

For those parents who may have missed all those documentaries following hedonistic teens around as they get hammered and do stupid things, there’s always the Inbetweeners Movie.

If there were any mums or dads still in any doubt about what their sons and daughters might, possibly, get up to while holidaying abroad, this coming-of-age movie about a lads’ trip to Malia well and truly blew their offsprings’ cover.

Is it any wonder, before Patrick set off for Magaluf, that I read him the riot act? Alcohol and large bodies of water should never, under any circumstances, be mixed, I told him.

And don’t lark about on balconies. In fact, avoid balconies altogether.

As my lecture on the importance of being sensible and staying safe continued, I could see from the look in his eyes that all he was hearing, as he stared at my mouth opening and closing was: “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said. And then he was off. I sent him all my advice by text too, to ensure he had it the information to hand in black and white. There was always a chance he might read it.

After a day or two, I texted him to ask how it was going: “All fine here,” he responded. “Just getting bronzed in the sun, quite a lot of balcony climbing and mixing large bodies of water with alcohol. Cocaine abuse kept to a minimum X.”

I showed it to a friend, whose son is also there: “Oh well, that’s reassuring.

At least there’s no sunburn or dicky tummies,” she said.

It’s probably best not to think about what they could possibly be up to while we await their safe return.

One of the few things we can be sure of is that they won’t be visiting many ancient monuments.

ALBERT, out playing football on the lawn, was convinced the driver of the car which briefly came into our drive and then did a U-turn must be a burglar. “He looked really suspicious,” said our 11-year-old.

“I’m going to put this in a safe place,” he explained as he hid his new World Cup football behind a cupboard in the kitchen. Because that’s obviously what any burglar would be after.

I WAS queuing up in a shop when my phone rang. It was my oldest son, who doesn’t normally call me on my mobile so, thinking it must be urgent, I went outside to take the call.

He was with his girlfriend and they had the chance of some cut-price tickets for a Royal Shakespeare performance: “It’s Henry IV, Part 2.

Do you need to have seen Part 1 to understand it?” he asked. There are some things you just can’t find an answer to on Google.

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