The widow who threw her bra into George Clooney's garden

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The widow who threw her bra into George Clooney's garden: How BEN AITKEN, 32, discovered a world of glorious eccentrics on budget coach trips (including the man who kept his wife's ashes in the boot)

By BEN AITKEN FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 22:27, 4 December 2020

On our tour around Lake Como, our coach had stopped outside George Clooney’s holiday house and Jill, the retired civil servant sitting next to me, was visibly and audibly excited. 

She even had a puff of her inhaler. She was not alone. 

The sight of Clooney’s Italian retreat had the entire coach spellbound; even the blokes were using their cameras to zoom in. 

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I watched her inch closer to George’s perimeter, remove her bra from under her blouse and fling it over the wall into the garden. I asked her why. She shrugged her shoulders and said: ‘Well, I’ve plenty of others'

Someone said the kitchen window was open. 

Someone saw a massive pepper grinder. Someone thought they saw him through frosted glass — which meant he was probably getting out of the shower.

The very thought did something to Jill. I watched her inch closer to George’s perimeter, remove her bra from under her blouse and fling it over the wall into the garden.

I asked her why. She shrugged her shoulders and said: ‘Well, I’ve plenty of others.’

A mile or so down the road, I asked if she had a bit of a thing for George. She said not really. If she had a thing for anyone it was David Dimbleby. 

She even went to the filming of Question Time when it was near her home in Telford and again when it was in Shrewsbury.
She’d been tempted to ask David a question. I asked what it would have been.

‘I don’t know,’ said Jill, a keen golfer. ‘Maybe if he fancied nine holes sometime.’

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The sight of Clooney’s Italian retreat had the entire coach spellbound; even the blokes were using their cameras to zoom in

Had David taken Jill up on her offer, he might have wanted to buy a pair of earplugs as I had discovered when I sat next to her on the 27-hour journey from Manchester to Italy.

They call this service the Night-Rider. That makes it sound sexy, risqué and desirable, but Night-Survivor would be more like it.
Jill was wearing a Union Jack travel pillow. She explained that it had belonged to her husband and now helped her sleep like a log. A very noisy log, she might have added.

Six hours later, with my right cheek pressed to the cold glass of the window and Jill’s snoring in my left ear, I could feel her pillow against my cheek, which meant that her face was about six inches from my own.

I decided that I’d dearly love to be somewhere else and horizontal. I didn’t mind where — a trench, an ironing board, the Korean Demilitarized Zone — just so long as I could stretch out.

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A mile or so down the road, I asked if she had a bit of a thing for George. She said not really. George is pictured above with Amal

Later, Jill complained that her travel pillow had a puncture.

‘I think it might have been your beard,’ she said. ‘I reckon you might have been getting too close.’

Although Jill was more than twice my age, we had something in common. People thought us a bit odd, Jill for going on holiday alone, and me for being a 32-year-old who had booked himself on a series of Shearings holidays, usually popular with those of grandparental vintage.

‘Are you one of the drivers?’ I was asked on the first, a trip to Scarborough I signed up for after a conversation with a friend.
He told me how his great-aunt had been on a Shearings holiday to Exmouth, whereupon she enjoyed four nights full-board in a period hotel and return coach travel. There was also entertainment each evening, various excursions, a fair bit of wine, and the uninterrupted company of people of pensionable age, all for a hundred quid.

That was less than my sister paid to get into a disco in Ibiza. But good value aside, what I was really after was the company of my elders.

Every time I went near a grandparent, or someone of that age, I came away from the encounter with some kind of snack and a new perspective.