ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Despite learning how to read and send emails, local bridge and wharf carpenter Lindsay Scoles considers booking international travel online a bridge too far.
The 27-year-old is as computer literate as most pensioners and orangutangs are nowadays, but the thought of parting with his hard-earned money through the information superhighway fills him with pangs of anxiety and worry.
“It’s not that I don’t trust the internet,” he said. “It’s just that there’re people on it who are out to take advantage of knockabout blokes like me,”
“That’s why whenever I need to book a holiday, I visit Norma down at my local travel agent. She knows me better than I know myself!”
“I walked in there last year needing a holiday big time and next thing I know, I’m swimming with dolphins and snorting coke out of a hooker’s belly button in Panama City. But I can’t go back there, I got deported last time because I accidentally let off a speargun in my hotel room and it hit another hooker in the back. She was all right in the end but now she’s a quadriplegic. Grouse trip, but.”
Mr Scoles eventually settled on a Scenic Riverboat journey through northern Germany and Denmark, like the one he saw on the television, with plenty of opportunities to stopover and take in the local ketamine and cuisine.
Paying for the trip in cash like a man in a stolen Subaru, he even managed to get the return premium economy airfare thrown in for next to nothing.
“Twisting Norma’s arm is half the fun,” he said. “Not every time, but most times I can get an upgrade or two out of her. But she did warn me that most people on this cruise will be quite older than me. But she knows how infectious my personality is, old people and dogs love me.”
