Sock it to me, India

DEPARTURE Lounge wrote recently of chance encounters on the roads she's travelled and reader responses have been encouraging.

Jellett

DEPARTURE Lounge wrote recently of chance encounters on the roads she's travelled (T&I, April 9-10) and reader responses have suggested some of you would like to hear more.

This pleases Lounge, as it's often the silly but telling moments that are the most memorable, the ones more likely to be recounted to friends or families but not delivered into print, where they would look inconsequential and just get in the way amid an essay on the palace-hotels of India.

LOUNGE is travelling with a small media group in northern England, including a colleague named (truly) Mr Smith. One afternoon they strike out together and she finds herself up on stage with him at Granada Studios in Manchester after we have toured the set of Coronation Street.

We have been plucked from the crowd after the hostess (who has a bouffant-like a lampshade and is a dead ringer for Patsy from AbFab) asks whether anyone has come a terribly long way to see the set of Corrie. "We're from Australia!" shouts Mr Smith before Lounge can belt him with her Rovers Return embossed pint mug.

So there we are, Mr and Mrs Smith. "This is Sue," Mr Smith tells the crowd, using a form of Lounge's name she never countenances, it being a verb and not a very pleasant one. But Lounge can do naught but smile as the crowd cheers. "Where are you travelling to next?" the hostess asks Mr Smith. This will be good, thinks Lounge, as he is going to visit his wife's family in a neighbouring county. He responds with just the name of the town and someone up the back cheers. It should have been enough. But, no, Mr Smith turns to Sue Smith, looks at her with a raised eyebrow as if he barely recognises her, and then turns back to the hostess and says, "But I don't know where she's going."

All the preconceptions about misogynistic Australian blokes coalesce in that one moment of utter mortification. What can Sue Smith say? She is not his wife? There are jeers and hoots from the crowd as a red-faced Lounge descends the stage. Mr Smith's bruises do not clear for some time. Some of them are in places he never can quite explain to the real Mrs Smith.

A YOUNG Lounge goes to sleep at an airport in India, curled up on a frankly uncomfortable bench, with her backpack as pillow. Her flight has been delayed indefinitely, all around sit inconvenienced passengers slumped like sacks. The mood is not merry.

But somehow Lounge sleeps and so do most of her fellow travellers. When she wakes after a few hours, it's because her feet are very cold. She looks down: her sandals are in place but the socks have disappeared. The sandals have complicated clips and one would have thought it impossible to remove them without Lounge feeling at least a tickle. The Houdini-like manoeuvre has taken place silently and stealthily, and now Lounge can do nothing but stare menancingly in all directions, willing someone to surrender her socks.

She doesn't discover the identity of the sock nabber but concedes they probably need those woolly feet-warmers more than she does. India teaches you lessons at every turn and Lounge now knows to carry spare socks about her person at all times - useful, too, for shoving down the throats of the Mr Smiths of this world.

LOUNGE is cruising on a ship awash with social hosts and ladies of a certain age who go by names as unlikely as Kissin' Annie and Foxy Fanny and seem very adaptable when it comes to replacing husbands.

She has been befriended by a lovely lady named Sylvia from Dorset, who has not cruised before and finds it all rather overwhelming. "Where do the crew go after hours?" she asks me, wonderingly. "How does the electricity get all the way out here in the middle of the sea?"

Sylvia is terrified of the predatory ladies on board but it is a British ship and she tells Lounge, sotto voce, that she plans to find the very nice captain and tell him to make these hussies wear more clothes and less make-up.

She taps at Lounge's cabin door one evening, clutching the daily newsletter. "Terrible news!" she cries. "The captain is leaving!" Lounge looks sceptical; we are in the middle of the Atlantic. Sylvia jabs at the page. "The captain's farewell party is on Friday night."

The captain is farewelling passengers, but Sylvia doesn't wait to hear that. She dashes off to find the bridge, to buttonhole the captain and tell him to make the loose likes of Kissin' Annie and Foxy Fanny let down their hems and scrub their faces.

LOUNGE fancies she is good at bargaining, although much evidence exists to the contrary. She is in Egypt, at Giza with her favourite travelling friend, Christine, and a camel ride is in order. Lounge is put in charge of summoning a cameleer and choosing two handsome beasts and negotiating the cost of a casual lope across the dunes, past the Pyramids and into the sandy yonder.

Christine saunters up to inspect the camels and is pleased with their apparent fitness and supermodel eyelashes. The two beasts, whose names, most oddly, also seem to be Susan and Christine ("Such a fortuitous coincidence," noted chief camel man Azibo as he sealed the deal), are led off by junior camel boy Shakir.

Christine and Lounge feel seasick by the time the extremities of the Pyramids are reached and then Shakir stops dead in his tracks. "Susan and Christine please get down from Susan and Christine. Ride is over."

Over? Lounge, it transpires, has negotiated a one-way ride. We refuse to budge until Shakir prods the camels to sit down. Clinging on perilously, we agree to pay the nominated price. Later, with the benefit of a calculator, Christine (the two-legged one) apprises Lounge that our return journey cost an astronomical amount. Lounge is put out to pasture in her role as chief haggler.