A Is For A Mid-Life Adventure!

When I think back on it, I’ve always been susceptible to stress... The difference being that in my twenties, most things were new and unknown. In those days, back when everything ran at a slower pace, I bounced back from obstacles with ease. Like I said all those little set backs were okay the first time around.

However, by the second and third time around, the stress levels started to mount. Along with an ever-growing workload to be finished almost the second you’ve been handed it. Okay that is an exaggeration but you get my point. By the time I got to my thirties, these little and not so little unpleasant events were getting old. If I’d known then what I know now, I probably would have started practising Yoga in my twenties, but I digress...

Back in 2001, a good friend invited me to spend two weeks at her ex in-laws’, in a small picturesque village, Ostuni, in the south of Italy. Things went south, figuratively speaking, when a Third Wheel invited herself on our Italian get away. How did she manage that I hear you ask. Well, she told each of us that the other one had invited her, and so it was that our little duo became a trio.

Right from the get go the Third Wheel tried to impose her will on our actions. It started with a simple request, she wanted to spend a day visiting Rome, as she never been there before. So we accommodated, but originally my friend and I had planned to catch the night train to Ostuni the same evening as we arrived. Now please bear in mind that we both thought that the other one had invited the Third Wheel, so in the beginning we, somewhat, let things slide. Unfortunately, this started an avalanche effect of ridiculous demands from her.

This was the drop of water for me that made the glass overflow, and once the doors to the dam had been opened, there was no stopping the torrent. The Third Wheel’s antics got very old very fast, and my already short fuse blew. However, the woman just couldn’t or wouldn’t – that’s still up for debate – take a hint no matter how straight to the point or obvious it was. Our first, and only evening, in Rome and I’d had more than I could stomach of the Third Wheel, and we hadn't even started our holiday.

It had begun the morning of our departure, with a phone call at 7:30am, asking me to go and do her last-minute shopping. Barely awake I was in no mood, so after a curt response I hung up on her. There’s just no dissuading some people... She called back an hour later to inform me that there was a Strike, accompanied by protesters, at the airport. Then she dropped the lovely tip bit, that she would be coming to pick me up in 45 minutes. I hadn’t even had my first cup of coffee, and I don’t like being rushed in the morning.

Finally, at the airport without a solitary protester in sight, she tried – unsuccessfully I might add – to take my window seat on the plane. She wanted to sit next to me, as if I really cared at that point. As it transpired she sat – much to my chagrin – right behind me in her very own window seat - imagine that another seat next to a window in a plane!

I will not enumerate the countless other occasions that she tried to manipulate us into bending to her will, each time more ridiculous than the last... Like the time she asked my friend if she could borrow her trainers, while my friend was wearing them. I did my utmost not to let her spoil my Holiday, but the Third Wheel had such an adverse effect on me that she made me physically ill. I must be one of the only women to go to sunny, southern Italy and lose 10 kilograms, in as many days.

 

At our wits end and out of options, we waited for the Third Wheel to fall asleep - one morning following a long night of partying – before sneaking back out to the Travel Agency and changing my return flight. This meant that the original duo had five days to catch up on the fun, and catch up we did. I would like to add that once the Third Wheel had left I was no longer sick!

The moral to this story is never invite – or in our case are duped into inviting – a Third Wheel on holiday when you already have a perfectly good bicycle. We had left for our holiday as good friends and returned from it best friends. Our dynamic duo has endured and grown over the years...