Holiday Memories & Plans comical poem 549 by Angela Lansbury

Sunwing Hotel, Thailand. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

 I'm dreaming of next holiday

When I can simply laze all day

In the best hotel we'll afford

Where none of us is ever bored

I dream of holidays long past

Prepare for feasting with a fast

I do not need to buy more clothes

Where last year's went, God only knows

And while I think of what might be

My mind hunts through my memory

I censor problems, right wrongs

My mind only plays happy songs

I do not think of hammer toes

I do not think of buzzing mosquitos

I do not think of delays and dirt

Broken limbs, strains, stains, blisters, hurt

The shop sells everything you lack

A hundred things you didn't pack

You need sun glasses, pills, a mac

It's all too heavy to carry back

You have to search through all the tat

For gifts for those who fed your cat

The prices prove which goods are finer

Although worldwide, it's all from China

Think - swim around a swimming pool

Then ice cold drinks will keep me cool

I'll read, how slowly time will pass

We'll sit sunbathing on green grass

Children squeal in a special pool

It's even more fun than their school

Well watch with one eye from afar

Until it's time to call a car

On their big balcony we meet

See sea at sunset, busy street

I'm dressed in white shells, Thail silk best 

Look fine to dine, then huge bed rest

A table by a seaview window

Candles cast a romantic glow

The room's arches, murals, impress

Each server's sparkling national dress

The soup sipped, tasty, names are strange

Fruit colours carefully arranged

I'll take more photos with my phone

Re-live highlights when I get home.

In pictures of tropical lands

The palm trees lean across cream sands

Hammocks sway by cute, painted huts

No fear of falling coconuts

In dreamlands, the tough grass is greener

Distant, dirty streets look cleaner..

'though not as perfect as it seems

The past looks perfect in my dreams.

-ends-

I changed In dreamlands all the grass is greener, which flows well and has lots of sublt irony, but my revised version is more specific. Tough grass (in Singapore). Singapore is cleaner, but uniquely, everywhere else is dirty, apart from Disneyland. And five star hotels. Antywhere you are paying more than 100 dollars a day without food and lodging is clean. 

I changed 'the dirty streets look so much cleaner', adding the word distant.

Good in parts, says my husband. Not the holiday, the poem.