17 May 2012
This is based on a true story. Told in my own way.
"I cant believe I spent Christmas day in me shorts" Darren said as he breezed into the kitchen, switched the air conditioner on to full and poured a glass of orange from the fridge. Tina was lying on the sofa trying to find an English speaking channel on the television, but having no luck. "I just wanna know what the weathers like back home" she said with a laugh. "It's 100 degrees and there all having street parties, because it's so nice" Darren joked back "But turn it down a bit love, we don't want to wake the others just yet, let's have a bit of calm before the storm".
Darren his wife Tina and their daughter Sally and the twins Harry and Mark were on their first ever Christmas holiday. The twins wanted to go to Lapland but Darren and Tina had their heart set on a much sunnier climate. The first week had been a bit of a nightmare with the twins getting sunburnt and Sally getting her heart broken by one of the hotel waiters in a bizarre love triangle involving the girl staying in the apartment next door. But everything had calmed down and they had enjoyed a great Christmas Day BBQ on the beach, complete with a plastic snowman and a Santa Claws dressed in Bermuda shorts.
After much deliberation it was decided that the day would be cut into two halves with the first half being spent at the beach and the second half around the pool at the hotel. "Right first order of the day is breakfast" Darren eagerly rubbed his stomach as he said this. Tina was applying sun tan lotion to the boys while Sally was on the balcony with her iPod ear plugs in listening to The Article Monkeys full blast whilst looking out over the bay, from the impressive view point of their balcony on the 20th floor.
"Can't we spend the day by the pool instead dad?". Sally said as she walked in from the balcony and threw her iPod onto the sofa. Darren and Tina looked at each other, smiled and both rolled their eyes into the back of their head in a comic gesture "I wonder why, this ain't got nothing to do with a certain waiter has it" Tina said with a huge grin and a wink at Sally, with this the twins Harry and Mark started to laugh and blew kisses into the air at their sister. "Whatever" was her only reply. "Right come on you lot I'm starving let's go and get some breakfast, you got everything love?". Darren said as he drained the last of his orange. Tina was always amazed at how much stuff they needed just to leave the hotel. In her bag she had towels, books, magazines, suntan lotion, iPods (3 of them), plasters and some much needed headache tablets.
As they walked down to the breakfast bar on the beach they looked like your typical English tourists abroad. Darren in his Red England shirt with yesterday's copy of the sun under his arm, (Thailand don't get the papers the same day like Spain) Tina carrying an oversized bag with towels sticking out the top, the twins were way out in front playing some sort of pretend army game whilst Sally was walking behind with a face that suggested she wanted to be anywhere but there.
The breakfast bar was a stones throw from the ocean, the most popular breakfast bar on the beach, they were lucky to get a table. "Cor that fans doing the trick" Tina said as she took her seat below the giant ceiling fan. "Five English breakfasts please mate and a jug of fresh orange" Darren said to the waiter before sitting down, opening his paper and pretending not to look at page three. As always the twins destroyed their breakfast as soon as it arrived as if it was a competition to see who could finish first, while Sally had left pretty much everything apart from a corner of a slice of toast. Darren wiped the last bit of sauce from his plate with his bread then sat back on two legs of his chair with his hands behind his head feeling full to the brim.
"Darren please tell me you picked up your wallet" Tina said as she was frantically searching the bag pulling out towels and a tangled mass of wires from the iPods. "Calm down love I'll go back and get it, order another jug of orange ill be back in five" with that Darren got up from his chair drained the orange from his cup and put the ice cubes down the back of Sally's top before running off laughing "I'll get you back for that dad" were the last words he ever heard from his daughter again.
As Darren got in his apartment he picked his wallet up off the chair that he had pretended to forget. He pulled his suitcase out from under the bed and unzipped the compartment inside and pulled out his expertly hidden cigerrattes. Since giving up two years ago Darren had secretly started again and was finding it increasingly difficult to find excuses to escape for a crafty ciggy. He walked out onto the sunny balcony with a bottle of beer that he had liberated from the fridge and lit his cigerratte. "I wonder if I can see the beach hut from out here" he thought as he squinted his eyes from the burning sun. When he looked down he couldn't believe his eyes. Indeed he could see the beach hut, but he could also see the giant wave of water heading right for it and subsequently crushing it and everything else in its path for that matter. Darren feeling absolutely powerless in the presence of this natural disaster knowing his family were down there, knowing that there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it.
Now I don't think I would do what Darren done next. With tears running down his face, he sat on his balcony and filmed the whole thing on his phone. You can see his film on YouTube, thats what inspired me to write this story. 11am 26th December 2004 the day that shook the nation. Tina, Sally and the twins, Harry and Mark added to the list of 240 000 people to have died that day. Tina and Sally's bodies were found 15 miles away, tragically the twins have never been found. If you asked Darren he would tell you the real total is 240 001 including himself in that number as a huge part of him also died that day, beneath that monstrous wall of water that became know as "The Boxing Day Tsunami"............
The Day That Shook A Nation • Opuss № I