Stoicism in Slovenia
I AM writing this on the hotel computer in Slovenia, where I am currently on holiday.
The former Yugoslav republic is a beautiful country, at the meeting point of the Alps and the Mediterranean.
However, we've just suffered some phenomenal storms. Cars were tossed upon each other Boscastle-style, landslides have made many roads impassible and buildings destroyed. It didn't make Sky News (which is available on the hotel's tellies) so I doubt any British people died.
Indeed, on the day of the storms, I went on a trip with a coach-load of holidaying Brits. The thunder and lightning were not going to put us off. The fact that the road outside the hotel had turned into a six-inch deep stream was no deterrent.
The coach load was far more M&S than S&M. But, nevertheless, there is something strangely masochistic about the British.
Part of the trip included a boat journey on what, I daresay, is a beautiful lake. The cloud was low, so we didn't get great views. The rain was pouring down so badly, we didn't really pop our heads outside.
But how we loved it.
It got we normally-reserved Brits chatting away. This was not going to get us down, we all agreed as we tucked into our packed lunches, sharing cutlery and bits of food.
If the weather had been fine, I imagine the conversation would have been little more than a few oohs and ahs and polite conversation about our hotels.
Instead, we had animated conversations. One quickly turned into the merits or not of eating swans. I'm not sure how that came about.
All those years of having picnics in my parents' Morris Minor Traveller when it was too wet to open the doors had prepared me for this. We all enjoy stoicism and, when it comes down to discomfort, revel in it.
I imagine a coachload of Americans would probably be working out who to sue. The French wouldn't have bothered to go at all and the Italians would have retreated back to Trieste as soon as the first drop of rain fell.
We were meant to get a train back to the resort. But the train tunnels were flooded, so we endured a three-hour coach trip instead.
Did we complain? Not a bit of it! We were made of sterner stuff than that. In fact, it didn't enter our thoughts to do so.
In fact, we enjoyed it much more because of the inconvenience and the camaraderie.
Now, the fact that I'm praising the masochistic side of our national psyche is quite ironic as I'm feeling an increasing desire to hit this computer. Sadism will out!
The Slovenes (and other Europeans) have their keyboards laid out differently to ours. Most infuriatinglz, the y and the z are the wrong waz around. The apostrophećs also not where it should be. Itćs taken me at least three times longer than normal to write this.
So I am exerciying great restraint in not hitting the kezboard with great yeal with something verz heavz.