A little late, but still near enough to the previously set deadline we set off for a walk.  I am not given to walks but, as the sun was sulking behind clouds, I decided to see what other people have said is, “nice.”

Walking through the dying waves was, for a few paces, quite pleasant.  It is, after all, the stuff of innumerable novels, plays, short stories and films.  And it is supposed to be good for the feet.  But it is a bit, well, samey.  And the water does not wash over one’s lower extremities with a constant force.  No indeed; one or two incontinent wavelets can easily give one the look of another meaning of that adjective and one is reduced to praying for the sun to come back out to evaporate the misleading dampness!

We walked down to the centre of the playa looking down for Our Purpose in Life, sea glass – and found very little.  The vagaries of tide and time seemed to have washed all the detritus from which gleaming examples of sea-smoothed broken bottles could be extracted from the tide line.  All was smooth shelving sand!

I do not think that all of this is natural.  Since living in Spain and going on holiday to Gran Canaria I have come to understand just how much very large machinery is involved in the simple phrase of “beach maintenance”.

 

I suppose my first practical example of how to make a beach look natural using unnatural means was in St Tropez when I slept on the beach (sic) with an Irishman (not in that sense) and was moved on by the police (shame!) so that the great sand sifting machines could rake and cleanse the sand for the richer people who went on the hygienic sands in the daytime.

That was not the first time that I had been moved on by the police.  The first time was when I was trying to sleep in a public park in Greece.  I was not alone there either.  This time I was sleeping with a horde of multi-national backpackers (still not in that sense) and I completely forget what I did after I was moved on.  Indeed I don’t think that I have thought about that particular incident for many a long year.  Trust me to remember St Trop in such detail and Greece so sketchily – such snobbery!  Plus ça change!

Once we were in the area in which we used to live, Toni went to waste his money on another futile ONCE lottery ticket (I am more than prepared to do a complete U-turn on this moral position as soon as he actually wins anything, of course) while I looked at the British newspapers and eventually decided to buy the Guardian.  As I always do – except for periodic lapses into The Independent.

And the paper did not let me down.  Quite apart from excellently informed “liberal” coverage of the riots it also, in the section “Reaction round the world” had the headline “Iran piles in as Britain’s woes are met with global schadenfreude”.  How well the Guardian knows its readership! 

When teaching English as a Foreign Language one also looks at things from a slightly different perspective, and I did wonder how much of that headline I would have to explain to my classes!

We walked back on the paseo and I think I walked a little too far as my knees are letting me know that I have done something out of the ordinary. 

The stairs are slightly problematic at the moment as my progress is a little less like Cinderella making a light-footed Grand Staircase entrance to the Ball than Blind Pew without the stick stumbling his way past the Admiral Benbow - and in this house that is a disaster because almost whatever you are doing you need to go up or down stairs to complete it!  I did say “almost”! 

In fact, that last simile took so much time to fabricate that I think that I have recovered full movement in all my joints!

As Dianne was a prime target for the mozzies, Toni has given the visitors’ room some extra protection.  It looks a little temporary and a little Heath-Robinson, but on the principle that “Anything is Better than Nothing” it should give the little critters something to think about as they try and get new blood!

Our visit to Gava allowed me to look at the end of summer range of loungers for the beach because one session of towel on beach was enough for me.  I do demand my creature comforts and the words “sand” and “relaxation” do not easily go together in my lexicon.

I have purchased a lounger which I sincerely hope is going to last a little longer than merely to the end of this season.  In my experience one should never assume that one’s lounger is going to last beyond the year in which it was bought. 

This year could (must) be an exception because there are only a few weeks left of the official summer I will have to remember to take the lounger in and store it inside rather than leave it to the vicissitudes of the weather to rot and decay.

Nothing done about the books today.