Monarch: a royal cock-up. Part One

Contrary to typical stories from a whining Brit, I actually really enjoyed my holiday. Many people build wild expectations on their holidays, seeing the opportunity to spend time in a foreign land as a time when they are invincible to the traumas of every day life. They believe that their time away will be an endless whirl of fun, frolics and kodak moments. In reality, the mosquitos attack you on your first day, you're sunburnt by the second and someone in your party catches dissentry from the local water by day three. All that heat and sun sends people potty and arguments and resentment amongst people begins to spiral out of control. I would like to take a moment to be smug and relay the fact that mine went relatively without a hitch. My boyfriend and I had planned to do nothing but lie in the sun, drink cold beer and read our books. And that's exactly what we did. Whilst the friends we were with went off on their own adventures every day, we were content to lie by the pool and listen to the screams of northern children hurling themselves into the pool. By the end of the week, we'd become so atuned to the noise that it became nothing more than a gentle hum. So yes, I was relatively smug.

However, there is one bit of the holiday that I don't think anyone can ever be smug about - the flights. Unless you're rich enough to buy a bed in Business Class, you're left feeling like a sardine in deeply air conditioned climes. On our way out, the flight resembled a storage fridge with people walking up and down the aisles to keep themselves warm in their optimistically skimpy attire. Requests for blankets by people with small children were met with a bemused look from the stewardess chaperoning our section of the cabin. Thankfully, eventually some dodgy looking cottage pie turned up and I was able to shove it in a plastic bag and put it under my feet to stem the hypothermia.

We also had a minor celebrity sighting - Kinga from Big Brother was also on our flight and clearly loved the attention that she got walking through Baggage Reclaim. She looks a lot smaller in real life than she does in the media. So, all round, the flight out to Tenerife was fine, bearable. I wish I could say the same for our return journey.

As our friends were flying out an hour before us, we figured we could spend the extra hour in duty free and share a cab with them. So, despite the fact that our Monarch Airlines flight wasn't until 3pm, we arrived at Tenerife Sur at around noon. Having confirmed our flights before we left, we were more than mildly shocked to see that our flight was already listed as delayed. To 6pm. But that was just the start. Trying to hunt down an employee of the airline was about as easy as finding a Unicorn. At the Monarch desk, we were told curtly by an employee of Phoenix airlines that it was a case of like it or lump it, we could go down to another airline desk and book new flights. Ben, who was due to get on a ferry at 5 the next morning, was not impressed, although he contains his anger much better than I have ever managed to.

Unfortunately, lacking funds and high on fury, we were not about to cave to the little demon's suggestion so we stuck it out. We waited. We waited a little more. Against our better judgement, we ate Burger King and mooched around duty free. For seven hours. Despite the assurance of weazil boy (who clearly dyed his bright blonde hair), our flight didn't leave at 6pm. Oh no, they got us to the gate, got the stupider people to queue and then nothing. An hour passed, the small children began to squirm and everyone sweated in the un-air-conditioned airport with tantalising views of the sea just beyond our glassed-in hell.

Having read every newspaper, sloped our way around the various shops selling Canarian tack and drunk all of the giant cokes we could afford, our anger turned to despair, turned to humour. For that final hour, we took out a pen and paper and began to come up with alternative slogans for the formidably awful Monarch. Their own slogan is Monarch: Pay less, expect more and armed with spite, we drew up a list of over 50 alternatives. Ben is currently in possession of the list, although he's promised to copy it over to me and once I have it, I will post the full list.

We finally got on our plane, sent over by a different airline, Mytravel.com which proved to be much nicer than the anticipated antiquity we had expected from Monarch. I arrived home somewhere around 1:30am, fell into bed with the knowledge I had to be up in 6 hours in order to pack up my student flat. But that's another story for another time, most likely tomorrow. Also coming soon, adventures on a volcano.