Why I won’t holiday with Virgin (From Bucks Free Press)
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The perfect wife and mother, Rebecca runs a home, a village magazine and is working on her novel. She does not visit the gym or jog but is in amazingly good shape. She enjoys photography, playing the piano and arguing with the TV. She lives in Amersham with her husband and youngest child (aged nine). Her eldest, now 26, lives and works in Buckinghamshire.
Why I won’t holiday with Virgin
5:27pm Tuesday 31st May 2011
Treat me like a hard-working person who’s done some research about where they're going and I’ll even travel with Ryanair.
Can you imagine anything worse than sharing a flight with me – someone who’s booked a Virgin Rock Star Service holiday?
I’d demand to be at the front of the queue when checking-in. Even if I’ve spent 30 minutes too long in the bar waiting for my scalding tea to cool.
Then I board. I want everyone to hear my woes as I relate them to the (non-Rock Star) passengers. Loudly.
“Do you know they were going to take off without me – a privileged passenger, a Rock Star?”
And then...
“I asked for my tomato juice with a straw and no ice! I can’t see out of the window. Can you get the chap beside me to move? He’s reading about Cheryl Cole in the in-flight magazine and doesn’t seem to know who I am?”
“I understood him to be your husband.”
“Of course he’s my husband. Do you think I’d sit next to a perfect stranger on a flight to St. Kitts? But I want you to stop him from ogling Cheryl Cole…”
Anyway, that would be me. And surely every ‘Rock Star’ on the flight. Potentially three hundred plus people – men, woman and children (God, the children!) expecting the stewards and stewardesses to give them one-to-one attention.
For £5896.07 I can have 11 nights in Antigua on an all-inclusive holiday. With my husband and child of course. Three rock stars.
I can see the appeal and think it’s a good idea – where non-celebrity, never-been-noticed wastrels like myself can pretend we’re someone important. For a couple of weeks.
The ad summary for this service is telling: Meet the "The Danke Schons", a (moderately successful) rock band with delusions of grandeur. They've been packed off to enjoy the trappings of an amazing Virgin Holiday [Their] super inflated rock-egos lead them to assume that the excellent service they're receiving is down to their unbelievable success.
A plane full of delusional passengers? Hundreds of super-inflated egos? I’d rather sit next to a real A-lister (just not Gwyneth P. or Tom Cruise) and listen to their troubles.
At least I could eat her in-flight meal and pudding. Or is she a vegan or ‘no white foodstuffs’ type?
So I now can start the search for a holiday in a resort where Virgin Rock Stars will not be.
Going by the inviting world map of where Virgin flies to, I think that probably leaves only Greenland and Russia. And Amersham.
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The perfect wife and mother, Rebecca runs a home, a bad temper and is working on her novel. She enjoys photography, playing the piano and likes almost anything that's out of fashion and uncool. She lives in Amersham with her husband and youngest child (aged ten). Her eldest, now 27, lives and works in Buckinghamshire.
NicM says...
8:06pm Tue 31 May 11