The Shelley Wright column

THIS time last week I was sat on a sunlounger between a swimming pool and the Ionoian Sea wondering what I was doing the same time the previous week.

It's an annoying habit I share with Del Boy Trotter, especially when the National Lottery is about to be drawn, but sometimes it makes me feel better.

I look back to where I was at the same part of last week or year and take comfort that things change, if not always for the better, and that by this time next year anything could happen - I really could be a millionaire.

Take the holiday for one. Yes, sitting on that sunlounger beats this rainy East Lancashire day but I can't for one second say I am not glad to be out of the Greek equivalent of Blackpool, if that's not being too harsh on the illuminated Fylde resort.

My friends thought they were watching a preview of my holiday snaps when they tuned into the outrageous Greece Uncovered series shown every Sunday night on Sky -- but they couldn't be further from the truth. Kavos was far from being fun in the sun -- most people had gone home when I got there. It rained the first day as we sipped our complimentary cocktails by the swimming pool, trying to avoid eye-contact with the representative who tried to sign us up for every excursion they had to offer.

I reckon these free-flowing freebies which have long been the toast of welcome meetings across the globe are spiked with a substance which makes even the most mild-mannered holidaymaker want to board the nearest charabanc and head for the hills.

Not me. I simply enquired after a safety deposit box, made sure my return tickets were securely locked away and headed back to bed.

A couple of hours later things were looking up. The sun had come out while my friend and I were asleep, but luckily a kind-hearted dog tethered to some railings nearby had realised our mistake and woke us up with a loud, continuous howling.

As you can imagine, I couldn't have been more pleased as we headed for the beach, it's just a shame that it didn't think to make the same noise when someone broke-into our apartment while we were out. Now, you didn't need to be Hetty Wainthropp to realise they had got in through the rickety patio doors, but I must admit our room was such a tip we didn't notice at first.

It was only when I went to have a shower and reached for one of four bottles of Pantene shampoo lined up on the bathroom shelf that I sussed something was up.

I don't exactly know what came over us then because we turned the room upside down for an hour looking for the shampoo, like we might have absent-mindedly put in the cupboard we couldn't reach above the wardrobe. But when the stress set in and my friend reached for one of her 400 duty-free cigarettes we had to face facts and accept we'd been robbed.

IN between a bit of amateur detective work and some professional sunbathing, I managed to fit in some reading on my holidays but was horrified to discover both books spent half their time having a go at reporters.

As if it wasn't enough that those two randomly selected novels chose to perpetuate the insulting myths surrounding journalism, I arrived home to find EastEnders having a go at us too!

I've never seen my family and friends turn on anyone the way they did when Gita and Ruth got their teeth into bleach-blonde hack Polly last week. You would have thought I 'd written the story myself.

Honestly, they'll be sending the Fowlers to Ireland next and portraying all inhabitants as drunken louts.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.