It’s the last night of a beautifully relaxing, two week holiday on the Greek island of Paros. We’ve spent the last fortnight just taking it easy, spending our days flitting between various laid-back beaches around the island, eating some amazing, healthy food and then the odd beer or two in the evenings with various local Greek friends who we’ve got to know over the years of coming to this beautiful little island. It’s been a perfect holiday.

The only downside is that while we were at the beech in the afternoon I had somehow managed to waft a passing fly into my ear and instead of him flying straight out again, he has decided to wiggle his way further and further into my ear. Convinced he was going to either die pretty quick or get washed out with a swim in the sea, I ignored the rather strange feeling of a fly buzzing in my ear. But by late afternoon the thing still hadn’t come out or died and in fact had annoyingly seemed to have worked his way all the way to my eardrum where he now seemed to be stuck. And still very much alive. It would be quiet for 5 minutes or so then I’d feel and hear a short burst of buzzing wings against my eardrum as he presumably tried to work himself free. It felt really weird.

I didn’t know what to do really, but with it being my last night I really didn’t want to spend the whole evening with something annoying the crap out of me, buzzing in my ear, so I decided to go to the nearest hospital, which thankfully was right in the centre of the town where I was staying. I got changed first so I could sort the fly out and then go out on a bit of a pub crawl straight after, to say goodbye to all our friends before leaving on the boat tomorrow. At least that was the plan ……

Arriving at the hospital it seemed like the place was deserted, I couldn’t find anyone there, but when I eventually found someone I was shown to a waiting room and told a doctor would be with us shortly. A few minutes later a very nice young male Greek doctor came in and asked what was wrong. He then stuck one of those otoscopes in my ear to see what was going on when all of a sudden he leapt backwards and started laughing his head off. Very professional I thought. Somewhat in shock I watched him immediately reach for the phone and having called another doctor friend of his and in between various fits and tears of laughter, seemed to be explaining in Greek the clearly hilarious sight he had just witnessed in my ear. Within seconds the door to our room flew open and another doctor approached with a big smile on his face, grabbed the otoscope and also started crying with laughter.

It took a good few minutes, but when they eventually pulled themselves together, one of them eventually explained what was so funny. They could see my gate-crashing fly stuck fast to my eardrum looking straight out at them. Strangely enough I didn’t find this quite as funny as them and the damn thing was STILL buzzing away on my eardrum, which was now starting to drive me a bit crazy. Having finally pulled themselves together they decided the only way to fix this was to try and wash the little blighter out with a big syringe and warm, soapy water.

And it worked. The buzzing suddenly stopped and my winged little stowaway was now falling out of my ear in small black bits. Believing it was all over I then stood up …… and proceeded to fall straight to the floor again. The warm water had played havoc with my inner ear and even though I hadn’t drank a drop of alcohol all day, it felt like I was pissed as a fart. I could barely stand up and after half an hour or so I didn’t start to feel any better at all. It was at this point the doctor said he could give me some medication to help with the nausea. I gulped when he returned with what looked like the biggest pill I’d ever seen, but then the doctor pointed at my arse and said ‘No … it goes there’. Oh great, just what I need, an enema.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, I really did start to feel like I was very drunk and when the nausea got too much I waddled my way to the nearest toilet, knelt down in front of it and started to vomit. And with no time like the present, I dropped my pants down and got my girlfriend to do the honours with the enema while I yodeled down the big white telephone at the other end. I want you to try imagine what that would have looked like. I was supposed to be sipping fruity cocktails from a little bar, watching the boats coming in and out of the port ….. NOT puking in a hospital toilet with my pants down and my girlfriend sticking a massive pill up my arse at the same time.

No, this certainly wasn’t the wonderful last night on Paros I had hoped for. For a start, we were supposed to be meeting an old Greek friend who owned one of the local bars. He had got worried when we didn’t show up and had amazingly actually tracked us down to the hospital. He arrived just as I was being hooked up to an intravenous drip, which they had just decided would be the best way to neutralise my system and get me up and running again. So I just lay there in the hospital bed for an hour, hooked up to a saline feed with the Mrs and Giorgos watching.

By the time I got out of hospital it was about 10 o’clock in the evening and to be honest it felt like I’d gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson, so the pair of them basically had to carry me back to the hotel where I fell into a deep slumber, dreaming I was being chased by a huge 6 foot hairy fly.

As far as cluster-fucks go, that was quite a good one, but thankfully I woke next morning fresh as a daisy ready for the long journey home. Not a great night for me, but one I imagine the Greek doctors still talk about fondly! The bastards.