We're all going on a summer holiday

Excuse me, young man, could you tell me the way to Johnston Terrace?

Oh right, its just that we were supposed to meet the bus there , we're heading off home today.

Where is home? Near Heckmondwike, thats where. Theres 43 of us on a bus tour of Scotland and the Highlands it said, including three days in Edinburgh, we was at the Tattoo last night, right nice it was though my friend Lily had her earplugs in because the noise of the big drum upsets her balance . Shes never been right since that episode with the brass band conductor. And Ina missed the whole thing, had to go back to the hotel what with her excitable haemorrhoids playing up.

Nice here isn't it ? Mind you I loved Loch Ness, and that castle thingy, where the monster lives, Joe Westhwaite reckons he saw it in the afternoon , but then he'd spent most of the lunch stop in the Prince Charley Arms, in that place Drumnadroc something. Nice that were it had lots of really nice shops, here let me show you me heathery tea cloths, and the fridge magnet of what the Scotsman wears under his bagpipes.

Most of us worked in the mill before we was retired, me and Lily had been there since we left school, I was on combing and she were on the shoddy table. Then she married that Bernie Durance with the funny arm, and she went part time.

When my Isaac died we started to go on holiday together on these coach trips, we've been all over, the Lakes is nice and Cornwall an all. This is first time we've been up here, nice though, I like the way the young lads sit on a blanket with their dogs and make sure the folks using the cash machines don't get mugged.

The foods been good though, we had a Highland Banquet in the hotel in Ballater, lovely it was, with cockle eekie and haggis and as many chips as you could eat, then they organised a kaley thing and we danced all the traditional dances with a piper and everything, and we all got given a sprig of lucky heather and a little bottle of whisky, but Joe collected most of them and poured it in his coffee this morning, then all the way from Aviemore kept making suggestions to poor Ina, until he fell asleep and disgraced himself outside Perth. we had to stop for half an hour till he dried himself out in toilets in Asda and then no one would sit next to him.

And thon Bessie Tankersley, Bessie Fairley as was, she got herself lost when we was going round Brittania, the bus driver found her asleep in the senior matelots shower room, mind you she were always one for a uniform , Fairley easy they used to call her up at the army camp, then she married that butcher from Otley but that didn't last, he left her for the barmaid from the Lion after two years, that were the end of her free saveloys. She comes on these trips but we don't really get on, she is a bit too forward.

The rest of them is all right though, good for a laugh, always ready for a sing song on the bus, though Stanley Mincer always wants the mike and sings Blue Moon like he's been possessed or summat. He were thrown out of Weslyan chapel when he invented his own words to "What a Friend we have in Jesus".

The only thing is the cost of everything, cup of coffee Two pound sixty, scone two pound fifty, its a scandal and then they wanted a whip round for the driver , I should cocoa, miserable beggar, always shouting back on bus, back on bus. Sometimes I'd hardly got me knickers up when you heard him, back on bus, back on bus.

Next year Ina and I thought we might go to Wales, depends on her piles though, she needs a cushion most days and between her sore feet making her need a sit down and her other end forcing her to stand she gets in a right old state. Lily'll not come though she says she's allergic to lardy cake, but I think she's worried about that little Welsh feller she met one night in Batley, what if I bump into him she says, I wouldn't know where to put me self. She should never have told him she was a bus conductress, he spent three weeks riding round on Yorkshire Traction trying to find her.

Right then, nice talking to you, just round the corner is it? Whats the time anyway? Oh I'm late, well that 'll annoy the driver, I'll give him back on bus !