I HAVE been on holiday in Croatia in the company of two widowed ladies of long acquaintance and mature years. We spent peaceful days together until there came the moment when the stunningly beautiful Anna burst into my life and spirited me away from them.
I was sitting alone in reception at our hotel the morning she came in through the main doors, looked around her searchingly, saw me, and marched over saying with a smile: ‘I think you are the man I am looking for. Let’s go.’
She was breathtaking, a Croatian girl in her early 20s, lissom and long-legged with golden skin and the first violet eyes I had ever seen.
She had said: ‘Let’s go.’ I went.
We set out to drive up along the coast with the Adriatic sea and its scores of lovely islands lying just offshore. Anna was a sparkling companion. She hardly ever stopped talking in her delightfully accented English. She devoted her full attention to telling me about the places we were passing through. She waxed lyrical when we made our way through Croatia’s wine-growing region. She told me: ‘Before this lovely day is over we will stop at one of my favourite wineries and there we will drink the best of my country’s wines. It will be a moment for us to remember.’
I wanted to tell her I couldn’t wait but she was off again. This time she was explaining how she planned to take me to visit one of Croatia’s most historic, romantic and delightful islands, by the name of Korchula. She told me it was the birthplace of the legendary Venetian traveller Marco Polo.
I reflected that if he had ever met Anna he would never have left home.
We boarded the ferry which took us across the channel to Korchula. We were there for three hours, soaking up the medieval heritage of its main port. Anna knew everything about the wonders we saw. We stopped only to enjoy a sunlit seaside lunch of the mussels and oysters for which the nearby waters are famous.
She wagged an admonitory finger. ‘No more than 30 oysters,’ she told me saucily, ‘otherwise you have too many children.’
Then we got back on the ferry. It seemed we were coming to the end of our spiritual odyssey. We drove back down the coast the way we had come. We stopped for our promised glass of wine together and in time we drew up back at my hotel.
By this time the coach was empty. The other 50 tourists who been on the trip had been dropped off. It had been a long day but one made memorable by the wonderful Anna, our tour guide. She had never stopped entertaining and informing us, microphone in hand up in front with the driver.
I had been the first passenger to be picked up and the last to be dropped off. Anna and I shook hands and I joined my two ladies for dinner.
• MY anonymous Laxey supplier directs attention to a small ad in the Isle of Man Courier under the heading ‘Vehicles Wanted’ offering to buy: ‘Scrap batteries, lead, cats, copper, brass, alloy wheels, scrap cars.’
Cats? Why do they want to purrchase these?
• THE Daily Telegraph was on hand last week to report how an Austrian daredevil planned to jump from a balloon on the edge of space and exceed the speed of sound: ‘But gusts of wind caused him to abandon his attempt at the last minute.’
He obviously didn’t want to blow himself off course.