Episode Two- Tortoise man and his comrades

When my family go away, we give people we see around a lot little nicknames. This time there seemed to be a lot of those. The first one we met was SB girl. She had a, um, toiletting accident that my mother discoved, and my dad unceremoniously called her Sh*tty Bum girl, which we shortened to avoid offense. Her mum was a lovely Geordie lady though, but we never did find out their real name.

The second was Chess Man and Chess Boy. Me, Dad and Greg had a little chess tournament the first night on one of the cute little chess tables in the games room. On the other two tables was a man teaching his son how to play. From then on he always asked us about certain rules like castling ad when pawns reach the end. I felt quite sorry for the boy, to be honest, he was the only kid in the family and no one made any effort to talk to him.

Flamenco man was the restaurant manager. He looked hispanic, slim and muscular, and he stood in that pose flamenco dancers stand in when they are about to start some routine with marracas. It was him and Chronis, a fat guy, who were running it, and they were both very nice, and the fat guy cut up some extra lemon for me because I have to have lemon juice on everything.

The main one was Tortoise Man. We saw him on the second or third day in the restaurant walking rather camply, and my brother said he walked like a tortoise, hence the name. We naturally assumed he was gay, until a couple of days later we saw him with a hot blonde wife and two daughters. My dad kept on updating us on Tortoise Man in a daft French accent, which was hilarious. One night, he wasn't there with his family, and so my Dad made up some ridiculous story 'Ah, Monsieur Tortoise 'as been chucked in ze sea in many pieces, because 'is family 'ave murrrrdered 'im' et cetera. Later on, there was a forest fire out in the mountains twenty miles away or so, really blazing orange with smoke billowing up. (I promise yout his is going somewhere)

Of course, Tortoise Man was very much alive and well, so my Dad had to come up with a new theory. 'I beleive Monsieur Tortoise Homme is an arsonist! Zat was no forest fire. Last night, 'e was not wiz 'is family, because he was igniting the side of ze mountain!'. Tbhe next day he was wearing a hat and glasses, 'Aha! It was deeeffffinitely him, because 'e is nervous I will give 'im away, so 'e 'as une disguise, 'ow cunning.' And so on. For a whole ten days. Seriously.

While I'm on the topic, my dad was also trying to convince greg that there were sharks in the bay, and he didn't give that up either. His 'prrof' was that the bous had the web address 'www.crazyshark.org.gr' or something similar printed on them, and that the dogs kept barking at something. You see, my father is like having another little brother around. Madness.