… day yesterday and my thorough and complete crashing out last night, and with it being Sunday so that there was no alarm to rouse me from my stinking pit, no-one was more surprised than me to find myself awake at 03:45 this morning.
I’d even been on a voyage during the night, but don’t ask me where because it all disappeared completely from my head as soon as I awoke. Not that there’s all that much to keep it in there these days, but that’s another story.
Being awake at 03:45 is one thing – being out of bed is quite another as we all know. It was a much-more-reasonable 07:00 when I staggered out of my stinking pit. That was followed by a clothes-washing session and then a shower. It’s amazing just how grimy everything gets when you’ve been sitting for 15 hours on a sweaty bus.
Throwing back the curtains, the first thing that I noticed was that the oil rig had gone. We’ve had an oil rig anchored a few miles offshore but it seems to have disappeared into the ether while I was away.
“Probably gone down with all hands” said the cynic inside me.
This morning I took some soya milk down with me to breakfast. And while I was collecting a second glass of orange juice (it’s real juice from oranges pressed before your very eyes) someone cleared the table, including my three-quarter-eaten muesli. I was rather miffed at that.
With having been away for a few days there was a lot of stuff that needed attention, and that took me right up until about 11:00. And then donning one of the pairs of shorts that I had bought in Leuven I hit the beach. A couple of hours with a good book and a bottle of water and I was well away. Nothing like as windy as it had been.
I was rather too early for lunch so ended up having to wait for a while. So I sat by one of the pools (there are five here, not four as I first thought) and here, out of the wind, it was even hotter.
A few things to attend to after lunch and then back down in the beach in my cozzy with book and bottle for another few hours. I stuck my feet in the sea too, just to say that I had, and rewarded myself with a nice cold orange juice.
But as for the sea, I watched some people running in there up to their necks without a second thought. Rather them than me. Far too nesh, I am.
By 18:00 the temperature had cooled down and the wind had got up sufficiently to drive me from the beach to the bar for a coffee. And the people here still don’t understand the meaning of “hot”.
A quick glance at my legs though shows that I have caught the sun. That’s something to take home with me anyway. A nice bit of red colouring. Nut I feel sorry for a small girl of about 12 or 13 – a blonde with pale skin who has clearly overdone it and is as red as a beetroot. She’s suffer for that in the morning.
With being caught up with something else I was late for tea. Pasta and lentils with spinach cooked in garlic. Delicious it was too.
After tea and a little reorganisation, I set off for a good walk around the grounds. The sun had gone down and so instead of being boiling, it was just hot outside.
I’d not been on a proper exploration outside before, and so I found plenty of little crooks and nannies that I never knew existed.
And so I made a mental note to go on a better exploration in the daylight tomorrow.
o-one was more surprised than me to find that it was 23:00 when I made it back to my room. That’s what I call along day too. Only 5 minutes of film before I switched the laptop off and settled down for the night.
Sweet dreams!
