It's life Jim, but not as we know it

The angle of the RTE report on the new planet this evening reminded me of something that made me laugh out loud. The reporter said 'it's life Jim but not as we know it' and it brought me back to being 16.

Mum/Nanny and I were on holiday. It was a last minute booking, Nanny had held off booking a two-week holiday in Greece until it fell to an appropriate price, ie low.

So while our bags were packed, we weren't ready to go until the price of the holiday to Rhodes dropped significantly, well she was being advised by a friendly tourist operator. In the end we paid less than half price anyway, the real cost was the fact that I was sitting on a wall at the bottom of our street when Nanny drove by in a taxi yelling out the window 'we are off in an hour, get a move on'.

And we landed in Rhodes, summer 1987, a massive heatwave which claimed the lives of a couple of tourists. It was so hot and a great holiday.

We had a ball, a great time. We had a wonderful hotel with cool people about and it was probably looking back on it now, while I have before now I don't think I ever realised, it was our girlie holiday, our first grown-up holiday, my Mum and me.

We had dinner, we had songs sung about us on the plane, Mum's was an apt Tom Jones number the nearest song to my Irish name is a Dolly Parton number and it was sung with gusto.

But the reason for my remembrance of this memory was the news that another planet, possibly one with water, has been found.

And it brought to mind my tape. For those of you who do remember, remember making a tape from the radio?

Well such a tape was one thing of many I went on holiday with.

I can't remember what was on it, I have a feeling there was a New Order number on it, but I could be wrong...

Anyway our hotel had a bar side pool with music. And one day the bar manager said if I had music he would play it, so I brought that tape I made just before I came away.

It all went well until that awful song Star Treking Across the Universe that I also recorded played.

"On the Starship Enterprise under Captain Kirk, Star Trekking across the Universe, always going forward cos we can't find reverse". Now this is where things become cloudy for me. I don't remember if I held one tape recorder beside another or whether the tape recorder I used not only recorded the radio but also ambient sounds.

The long and the short of it is that in the middle of Star Trekking song, which I am embarrassed about, all you could hear through the loud speakers all over the hotel pool and bar was my Mum calling me by name, up the stairs in our house (and therefore loudly all over the place) if you know what I mean, asking me did I want potatoes with my dinner.

And when I say calling I mean saying ' REDMUMMMMMMM DO YOU WANT POTATOES WITH YOUR DINNER?... Loudly, course she didn't say RedMum, she called me by that Dolly Parton song soundalike, eh my real name.

Anyway I spent the rest of the holiday having people say/shout to me ' RedMum/RealName, you want some potatoes? Oh yeah in a faux-Belfast accent as well.

And I didn't, in the same way didn't respond the first time she asked me.

Okay I am leaving something out, my response, which was broadcast, loudly across the pool and bar ' AAAaaccccchhhhhhhhhh Mummy I am recording THAT!".

I didn't live that down for those two-weeks, at all. It's just one of the many Red Mum moments...

I'm sure I have that tape somewhere, maybe not, but wouldn't it be a geg to find... (Scroll down to find explanation of geg if you don't know it, cos you should, its a great word.)