… tired last night!

It was quite early when I settled down in bed to watch a film on the laptop and I can’t even remember much after the opening credits. “Out like a light” is hardly the word.

And that was how I stayed until about 06:00 my time (05:00 North African time) when I awoke. “Gone with the Wind” has nothing on that.

And gone off during the night too. I can’t now remember where I was, but there was a ginger cat – and quite rarely, a female ginger cat – that was being bullied by a younger male cat and I had to rescue it. the lady who was its owner told me that the younger cat was itself being bullied by a couple of older males that she had and this was how it asserted itself by attacking the female
A little later I crossed over to some island – an island that reminded me very much of the Frisian islands off the north-west coast of Germany. And the first living thing that I encountered was a black kitten. It came down off a wall to see me. And as I was stroking it, first one and then a second black kitten came to join it and I ended up having three black kittens around me seeking attention.

Once I re-entered the Land of the Living this morning it took me a while to gather my wits, which is quite a surprise seeing that there aren’t all that many to gather these days and then after the usual morning performance I went down to breakfast.

It’s another buffet-type thing and that is good, and if you are a carnivore or even a vegetarian you can pig out like nobody’s business with the vast choice that there is on offer here. It really is tremendous.

As for the vegan, there’s not a lot of choice – but even so, you don’t go hungry. There’s no soya milk for the muesli unfortunately but me no daft, me no silly, I bought a litre of that with me in my suitcase and so tomorrow onwards I’ll be taking my own supply down to breakfast.

I did say that there’s a fridge in my room, didn’t I?

There was also an opportunity to study the restaurant times. There are bars and snack bars scattered about all over the place and basically, the meals are served as follows –
BREAKFAST – 07:00 – 10:00
LUNCH AND SNACKS – 11;00 – 17:00
EVENING MEAL – 18:30 – 21:00
That doesn’t leave all that much time for sunbathing on the beach, does it?

Back up here, we encountered the exciting phenomenon known as “Tunisian Hotel Showers” in my nice luxury bathroom.

I’ve already told you … "on many occasions" – ed … about Quebec Motel Showers, but Tunisian Hotel Showers are quite different.

Here, you spend about 5 minutes setting the water temperature exactly how you want it and it remains totally constant right up until the moment that you go to stand underneath it, after which it’s pot luck.

And they clearly expected me to be coming, didn’t they? There’s a clothes draining rail hanging up over the end of the bath (the shower is actually inside a bathtub) to hang up your wet clothes after you have washed them.

A little later in the morning we had a “Welcome Meeting” after breakfast where our tour guide did his best to sell us all of these optional extras. And I’ll talk more about that in due course.

A lot more.

He also explained about the private safes in the room and how to work them. I immediately came up here to try mine out, and promptly managed to lock myself out of it. It’s a good job that I ran a test on it before attempting to put anything in it, isn’t it?

I picked up my book and headed out into the sun. After all, that’s why I’m here.

I’d seen all of the pools from my window and my little route to the beach took me out onto the terrace where I could have an even closer view.

They looked quite inviting and ordinarily I would have taken the plunge, but I can’t these days with this implant thing in my chest. I shall just have to admire the view.

Then finally down to the beach with my book. No point in having a private beach to hand if you aren’t going to sit on it.

As well as reading my book, I sat and admired the view from here too. That’s the town of Sousse away in the distance. the third-largest city in Tunisa. It was a Phoenecian city known as Hadrumetum and is even older than Carthage.

It was sunny and bright for a change out here, but windy and cool. And there was nowhere to go to seek shelter. I stuck it out for as long as I could.

There was actually quite a lot going on on the beach this morning.

We had a guy parading his poor, wretched camel up and down the beach seeking customers to ride it, and being sent back by the Security Guard to clean up his animal’s … errr … leavings.

And surely the Security Guard didn’t REALLY set his dog on the unlicensed beach vendor? Or were they just playing about? But I did notice that the unlicensed beach vendor didn’t return.

We had been warned about making sure that we always keep our possessions close to us when we are in the public ares, so Brain of Britain forgot his rucksack in the restaurant after lunch, didn’t he? Lunch by the way was a buffet with the same food on offer as for last night’s evening meal so I had a plate of salad and some bread followed by more fruit salad and an orange.

This afternoon, I went on an adventure.

In theory there is no restriction on leaving “the compound”. Everyone stresses that quite clearly. But when you ask for directions to the nearest cash machine, they all look totally bewildered. “Why do you need to do that? We have everything here”.

After much explaining and a great deal of persistence, someone finally tells you that there’s a cash machine in the medical centre about a kilometre away.

So off you set – and have to run the gauntlet of taxi drivers, carriage drivers and bus drivers waiting at the gate. And you end up walking several hundred metres before they finally get the message.

The security guards at the next hotel look quite surprised to see a European pedestrian too, and engage one in conversation.

But it’s clear to see at least one reason why they are reluctant to let tourists wander about the area unaccompanied, and especially on foot.

Since “the troubles” began, the number of tourists coming to North Africa has declined considerably, as one of the security guards was obliged to admit. And it’s not long before you encounter the first one of the abandoned hotels here along the beach.

This one hasn’t seen a client in several years and the owners have long since gone into bankruptcy, so I was told.

And not only that either.

There was a big construction boom here at one time and all of these hotels are evidence of that of course. but there was a considerable amount of new building that started subsequently that was abandoned once the tourists stopped coming and there are these overgrown, weed-infested building sites everywhere.

And all of this probably explains why the hotels that are still going are charging such ridiculous prices for a stay. I’ve never ever had such good value in a hotel in all my life.

The Medical Centre did indeed have a cash machine and it even recognised my French bank card which is certainly something. And my presence at the cash machine certainly drew the attention of the locals waiting to see the doctor.

But here’s something else to consider. The Tunisian Dinar is worth just about 3 to the Euro, or 3.4 to the Pound Sterling. But the maximum withdrawal on the machine is shown as just 100 Dinar – about €33 or £30. So that tells you something about the cost of living around here.

The walk back involved dodging the buses and taxis that kept on stopping to see if I wanted a lift and

I was on the wrong side of the road for this one though. It’s a sort of artificial train that does the rounds of the hotels and I’m not sure where it goes to after that.

Somewhere that didn’t appeal to me, I bet. Ad it’s not really my thing anyway. I’ll be going on a better train than that, I hope.

I’d noticed earlier that there was a gardener in the compound tidying up all of the palm trees, and on coming back into the compound after my perambulation I almost collided with him as he was leaving with his donkey and cart.

I suppose that this is what you would call being “out on you ass”,

However, joking apart, I’ve seen quite a few doney-and-cart combinations, more than I would have expected to see in the 21st Century, and it does underline the fact that the benefits of globalisation haven’t cascaded all the way down the pyramid quite yet

After a relax (but not, I hasten to add, a crash-out) I went back out to the beach with my book.

While the sun was even brighter than it had been this morning, the wind was even stronger so there were even fewer people on the beach.

That suits me fine of course because I don’t do crowds as you know. But I would have quite happily traded a few more people for some of this wind.

But never mind the beach, the people and the wind for a moment. I was much more interested in what was going on offshore.

There was some type of service boat – the blue and white one – visiting the oil rig and in the background were several large ships. And with a decent zoom lens I could see it too no matter how far out to sea it all was.

Too far out though for me to identify anything, but suitable candidates for a “ship of the day” nevertheless.

The port of Sousse is quite an important one with a considerable amount of marine traffic. I shall have to work out a way of going for a visit before I go home.

Anyway I stuck it out for as long as I could and then retired to the café for a coffee. And one thing that I have noticed here is that they don’t understand the meaning of the word “hot”.

Tea tonight was almost the same as last night, but instead of beans with the salad there were chick peas and lentils. They will do nicely, thank you.

But you can tell that the hotel is full of Belgians. Mosselen en fritjes was on the menu tonight.

After tea I declined the cabaret and came back up to my room for a rest.

I had a glance out of the window to see what I could see but the answer to that is “not an awful lot”. But it still looks quite mystical down at the pool under the artificial light.

So I settled down and did some work on the outstanding photos for a while. There are quite a few of these to organise.

And now an early night. i’m off on my travels early in the morning, folks.

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