The first holiday abroad - 1991

Let me tell you about a little incident that happened to me while on holiday with my family in Tunisia back in 1991.

This would be my families first holiday abroad. Things didn’t bode well when we had to change our plans part way through the year just after we had booked our holiday. We had booked to go to Dubrovnik in Yugoslavia. However the in a matter of weeks of booking and placing our deposit the country fell into civil war and we had to change our destination. The only place that we could afford with the change was Hammanet in Tunisia.

However I wasn’t fussed about the change one bit. My first holiday abroad was not to Spain or somewhere touristy in Europe, it was instead AFRICA. It sounded so exotic. In a sense it was.

Our first day there we were given a guided tour of the region, and in the half French/ half broken English of the guide we learnt it was still re-building after the war. Knowing a little about North African history I couldn’t think of a recent war. When I asked, “What war is the country rebuilding from?” The guide answered perplexed, “The Second World War young man, your good man Montgomery and that naughty German Rommel.” Good lord I thought, where had we come on holiday.

After a week of a great, hot and exciting holiday we decided to visit a local market town for their weekly market. Nabeul market was not use to tourists, but they were savvy enough on how to sell tat to the stupid English. My brother and I to make us stand out even more from the crowd, bought Laurence of Arabia head gear. We looked fantastic, if not a bit stupid.

After ten minutes of walking around the market we still had groups of children trying to sell us the same headgear we were actually wearing. After I had politely told them to go away, I saw the group of children run up to my brother and try to sell him another head gear. It was at this point I saw the cheekiest mugging in my life. While one child tugged on the left of my brother, him turning to speak, another child on the other side quickly and quietly unzipped the front of his bum-bag (this is the early 90’s remember) and take out a wad of notes. What annoyed me was not that the child was pick pocketing my brother but more that the child counted the notes, took two out of the wad and placed them back into his bum-bag and zipped it back up. Then tugged on his right shoulder and tried to sell him his batch of head gear.

I don’t know what happened next but all I know was I had the pick-pocket held by the neck, shouting at him to give the money back, my brother screaming behind me, in a whisper, “what the f’ing hell are you doing Glen!!!” and the whole market at a standstill, watching, murmuring, and in the corner of my eye I noticed we were stood outside a butchers, a massive Tunisian man sharpening his cutting knife. It was at this point I realised that whatever I did next may determine if we were flying back to Manchester in one piece, or being served as kebabs within the hour.

I told the young boy that if he didn’t give back the wad of money I would prosecute him and he knew what happened to robbers in Tunisian law, they get their hands chopped off, at which point he put his hand into his pocket, passed back the money, I let him go and his friends and him disappeared as quick as they appeared and the market came back to life. My brother still fuming, still not realising what had happened, hit me across the head, so I stormed off and bought a bunch of tourist tat as gifts for people back home out of his wad of money.

It was a great first holiday abroad and that was just one of the adventures we got up to that two hot and interesting two weeks in 1991.