Tag Archives: pool

Far From The Maddening Crowd

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Picture the scene. We’ve just arrived in the beautiful hills of the Algarve for a much-longed for mini-break, settled down with a book in a secluded grassy spot away from the hustle and bustle of the pool area, perhaps looking forward to a quiet snooze… when all of a sudden a bunch of raucous Essex folk descend.

‘Babe, babe,’ shouts the korma-coloured woman in the bejewelled bikini, wheeling a pram. ‘There a good spot here. Get Dave.’

‘Daaasvvvvve,’ yells Babe. ‘Get Filipo to bring us four sun beds. And get the beers in!’

Larger-than-life Dave, who looks and sounds just like James Corden but with none of his affability and a belly the size of Mount Vesuvius, bellows for Filipo.

Filipo dutifully trots off and returns, trundling the loungers behind him. Despite being twice his size, larger-than-life Dave doesn’t offer to help but merely jabs a chubby finger to where he’d like his loungers – namely within 30cm from us.

We are surrounded.

‘Oh no,’ grumbles the husband, whose tolerance levels for loud people are generally much higher than mine. ‘TOWIE have arrived!’

We thought we were safe here. It wasn’t by accident that we ended up relaxing on this grassy knoll. After a tour of the available sunbathing spots at the hotel, this particular location was carefully chosen for its quiet ambience: a safe haven from the highly-populated pool area – a mass of reddening flesh and squawking pool splashers – yet with views of the surrounding hills and a soothing babble of water in the background. How wrong we were.

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This year has turned out less about The Battle of the Sunbeds (previously documented here and also here… oh, and here too – I’m clearly OBSESSED!) and more about The Battle to Eschew the Essex Crew.

‘Wouldn’t they be better in one of those cabanas down by the pool?’ I whisper. ‘They’d love it down there. Tell Dave!’

‘I’d even buy them a round,’ says the husband, as Filipo meekly scurries over with a tray of beers. ‘Just to get them out of earshot.’

‘Come this way, Dave,’ mimics the husband, in a soothing tone. ‘I’ve found you a lovely spot down by the lower pool, quite some way from here. I’ve even thrown in a bucket of Coronas!’

Larger-than-life Dave obliviously takes one sip of his beer and curls his lip.

‘Filipo,’ he booms. ‘Can I have another one of these but this time make it a cold one, would ya?’

Babe 1 appears to be grappling with a baby. ‘Babe,’ he says to Babe 2, holding up the baby and sniffing at its nappy. ‘Chantelle’s got a full package ‘ere.’

The husband lets out a long sigh.

That night, we decide to venture out of the Conrad compound and head to a restaurant recommended by a friend.

We ask the concierge for a taxi and – bizarrely – he offers to drive us himself. Before we know it, we are ushered into a luxury saloon and are soon purring down the immaculate driveway of the hotel, listening to the croon of Chris Martin.

‘The concierge certainly goes the extra mile – literally!’ I whispered to the husband. ‘Is this normal taxi rates or are we now paying for a private chauffeur?!’

‘No idea,’ says the husband. ‘But I like it!’

Quinta do Lago, famed for its golf courses, is like a colonised version of the Truman show: palatial homes peek from behind perfectly-pruned palm trees, while pearly-toothed families pound down pristine pavements. If it’s culture you’re after, you won’t find it here.

It’s very hot in Portugal and the husband appears to have a shortage of shorts: dressy shorts, that is – the kind of shorts you might wear to visit a restaurant of an evening, perhaps teamed with a pair of… (ultimate middle class horror)… loafers.

The husband has one pair of such dressy shorts; they are a light blue Reiss number and could stain easily, if he is not careful. He is under strict instruction to cover them with a napkin at all times.

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We arrive at the restaurant. It’s terribly refined and overlooks a picturesque lake. King of the pearly teeth Philip Schofield is on the table next to us, holding court with a group of TV exec types  – and a gaggle of girls straight out of Chelsea clink glasses opposite. Ex-footballer Graham Souness is apparently at the bar.

The husband orders a black cod broth. He takes one mouthful and somehow manages to douse his shorts in splodges of soy sauce.

‘Something bad has happened,’ grimaces the husband, peering down at his lap, the protective layer of his napkin nowhere to be seen.

‘How bad?’ I ask, craning my neck. ‘It it salvageable?!’

‘Really, really bad,’ says the husband, sliding his lower half further under the table. ‘It’s too distressing for you to even see.’

I throw my hands up in a signal of mock despair and as I do so, I somehow manage to knock a whole glass of wine straight into the husband’s lap, dousing his ill-fated shorts even further.

The husband gasps; waiters rush over… even Schofield stops his patter and turns to stare.

But it’s too late to save them.

I think the husband will be wearing trousers from here on.

The next day, I peer out of the window to check out the state of play on the grassy knoll. The Essex crew’s loungers from the previous day are still there, dominating our quiet spot. Those loungers had never been there previously, I note, but overnight Filipo has failed to move them back to wherever they had came from. This was troubling; Dave and co. had effectively SEEDED the area.

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‘I’m going to go down and bagsy our loungers,’ I tell the husband. ‘But I’m also going to move the additional loungers out of the way to discourage any further TOWIE invasion.’

‘Fine with me,’ says the husband. ‘But please let it be noted that this is not the behaviour of a sane person.’

I furtively scamper down to the pool area. By the time I have carted off six loungers (some double ones- who knew?!) and restored the grassy knoll to its original half crescent sunbed formation, I have worked up quite the sweat.

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‘All done,’ I say to the husband, who is patiently sitting at the breakfast table, engrossed in his book (Wonder by R.J Palacio).

I turn back just in time to see feeble Filipo wheeling the sun loungers BACK to where I had moved them from, with larger-than-life Dave swaggering brashly behind him.

‘There. Is. No. Escape,’ says the husband.

Creepy Crawlers

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I suppose it stands to reason that at 6am in the morning the gym is full of fruit loops. After all, what sane person would tumble out of bed at such an ungodly hour and voluntarily start running on a treadmill or start swimming half a mile?

That’ll be me then.

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For many years now, I have (often wearily) swum 30 lengths of the pool three mornings a week – before a great race against the clock to wash and blow dry my hair, slap some make-up on, grab a coffee  – and be at my desk for 8am. Recently, I’ve upped this madness to five mornings a week, to include two gym workouts too.

In my mind, I see this early morning as a good use of time: Basically, if I wasn’t at the gym, I’d be happily catching a few extra Zs in the comfort of my own bed.

But you have to draw the line somewhere. What kind of lunatic, for example, sets their alarm at 5.30am, drives to the gym and then idly lounges around in the jacuzzi?

Every morning, as I’m feverishly front-crawling in the pool, there’s a least three people just chewing the fat in the jacuzzi/ sauna/ steam room like they’ve got all the time in the world. If you want that kind of relaxation at the crack of dawn, here’s an idea: JUST STAY IN BED.

Most early-morning gym frequenters follow the unwritten rule of going about their workout/ hair dry/ make-up application in comfortable silence. No-one wants to start making small-talk at such an early hour.

No-one that is, except for Mad Scottish Woman.

I’ve mentioned Mad Scottish Woman before. But recently she has begun to loom even larger in my life. She’s in the pool pretty much every morning, clad in a full black wet suit and thrashing around like a huge excitable whale.

When she’s not showering other swimmers with torrents of water from her noisy, showy lengths of butterfly, she’s pacing around the sides, chomping on bananas and sniffing around eagerly for anyone to talk to. If in doubt, do not make eye contact with this woman.

What amazes me the most is that despite this seemingly extensive fitness regime, Mad Scottish Woman is still about the size of a small garden shed.

Only the other morning, as I was feebly lowering myself into the water, Mad Scottish Woman started yelling and beckoning to me with over exaggerated arm movements.

‘Do you want this float?’ she bellowed.

Float? Why would I want her float?

‘No, thank you,’ I said primly. I lowered my goggles in what I hoped was a please-do-not-engage-with-me-any-futher-gesture.

Luckily for me, Mad Scottish Woman was already eyeing up her next victim: a drippy-looking man, who was doing the doggy paddle in the lane next to her. She started gesticulating to him that he was doing his stroke all wrong.

‘Like this,’ she said, as she pounded down the length of the pool, soaking several unsuspecting swimmers in the process.

On her return, she actually started man-handling Mr Doggy Paddle, showing him how to stretch out his arms. He looked nothing short of terrified.

‘This woman is out of control,’ I thought.

Now, I’m not one to usually cast judgement on the trends of exercise attire but recently, I’ve spotted some rather bizarre get-ups in the gym itself.

Exhibit A: Woman on cross-trainer in full padded coat, complete with fur trim.

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Exhibit B: Woman clad in full length dress, attempting to cross train – and, later hitching it up to her knees to grapple with the rowing machine.

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Whatever happened to a good old t-shirt and leggings?

In the coffee queue the other morning, a man quite randomly offered to buy me a coffee.

I found this a little odd.

It was 7.45am. I’d just done 30 lengths, dried my hair in a hurry, and somehow managed to fend off the advances of Mad Scottish Woman. I didn’t have any fight left in me.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I’ll just take a medium-sized-one-shot-extra-hot-soy-latte-easy-on-the-foam.’

‘A what?’ he said.

In Da Club

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Playground of the rich, metropolis of the future, and home – it seems – to half the population of Essex… Welcome to Dubai.

Where there’s sun and money, the C-list schlebs will follow. Fame-hungry Abbey Clancy’s on the beach over yonder straddling a camel and posing for the paps, and pearly-toothed Mark Wright (whoever he is) is busy filling his boots at the free hotel buffet.

Basically, our hotel has become the setting for an entire episode of TOWIE.

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Getting some winter sun comes at a high price. Surrounded by cranes, skyscrapers and garish opulence, the husband put it like this: ‘It’s basically Disneyland in the desert. But instead of Mickey Mouse on the prowl you’ve got fake sheikhs on the take.’

Seriously though, we are very happy here sipping ruinously-expensive cocktails, lapping up the rays and reading our books, save for an annoying man next to us whose mobile appears to be surgically attached to his ear. His latest call was to Carl Cox.

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‘Alright Coxy,’ he bleated in a Jonathan Ross voice. I was surprised he could speak at all given the mouthfuls of food he was shovelling in in a most slovenly manner. (Seriously, eating lunch on your sunbed – is there no decorum left?) ‘I’ve told them it’s £150,000 for a four-hour set. They’re getting back to me.’

Hot on the heels of bumping into some parents from school (‘What are the chances?’), the husband then decided that there might be someone he knows reclining on the sun lounger behind us.

‘Take a long look at him and report back,’ said the husband, in hushed tones.

‘Thinning grey hair, rather challenged around the waistline, looks just like the old dude off Ray Donovan,’ I said, covertly peering from behind my shades.

‘Thats him!’ said the husband. ‘Let’s hide.’

There’s been a lot of talk from the husband of what to do on New Year’s Eve.

If it was up to me, I’d be tucked up watching the final episode of Homeland in my new cashmere bed socks, perhaps taking an occasional glance at the fireworks through the window.

This option, however, has been vetoed by the husband, who appears to have succumbed to the age-old pressure of What To Do On New Year’s Eve.

This might mean we are forced to spend an obscene amount of money on a set menu in one of Dubai’s fine eateries. Naturally, I’m doing everything in my power to stop this.

Our hotel, which lurks in the shadow of the Dubai Mall – a great sprawling behemoth of consumerism – has published a handy guide on what to do for New Year’s Eve.

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Every restaurant in the vicinity has a minimum entry fee and, worse still, you have to be there by 4pm at the latest! That’s eight hours of wining and dining before the chords of Auld Lang Syne even strike up. I was having palpatations just thinking about it.

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I idly flicked through the booklet. Carluccios had a set menu for AED 625 (about £125), TGI Fridays were charging a staggering £300, Fortnum and Mason were a snip at around £200, and Starbucks were charging £100.

Wait… Starbucks?! Home to overpriced wishy-washy coffee. What could possibly be on this £100 set menu? Stale blueberry muffin for starters, anaemic mozzarella panini for the main, and one of those sickly caramel waffles for dessert – all washed down with a tepid milky latte?

Luckily, fate has intervened… in the form of The Club. The Club is a newly-discovered lounge in our hotel which serves up FREE afternoon tea, FREE snacks 24-7, and FREE food and drinks by night.

Note the emphasis on free. In a city where you have to sell a kidney to buy a gin and tonic, this is quite remarkable.

The husband and I made our first trip to The Club last night and enjoyed champagne cocktails and chilled glasses of Sauvignon – all on the house.

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All around us people were hungrily slurping their free drinks and tucking into the rather sizeable buffet. A man in scruffy tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt shuffled past, plate piled high.

‘Look at that,’ I whispered. ‘These people aren’t even bothering to change out of their slobs. They’re just here for the free food and drink!’

‘That’s Mark Wright from TOWIE,’ said the husband, who to my knowledge has never watched an episode of reality TV in his life.

‘He’s really big news’.

As if on cue, a gaggle of tipsy women raised their Cosmpolitons and chorused, ‘Hi Mark’ in unison as he passed.

‘Never heard of him,’ I said.

‘Here’s the plan,’ I told the sceptical husband. ‘We come to The Club for New Year’s Eve. We’ll gorge on the buffet, quaff the champers and watch the fireworks from the balcony. And best of all, it won’t cost us a penny!’

‘There’s just one problem,’ said the husband.

‘I’ve already booked Starbucks.’

Sardines On A Sunbed

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‘I just want to walk into a hotel lobby and be anonymous,’ grumbled the husband.

We are on the penultimate day of our holiday in Sóller, Majorca. And the owner of the little boutique hotel where we are staying seems to be taking an overly-keen interest in our movements.

Everytime we walk past reception, he collars the husband to rhapsodize about the weather, England, the weather again, the restaurant we are planning on going to, even the clothes he is wearing.

The owner – Matthew – is actually a very nice man. But his very hands-on approach to hoteliering is making the husband on edge.

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Despite the beautiful room here, we have begun to long for the relative relaxation and anonymity of the finca in the hills, where we resided for the first part of our stay.

The owner Marc might have had a fixation with serving gallons of coffee at breakfast and an over-inflated sense of what his bottles of diminutive water were worth, but because he was slightly autistic he left us largely to our own devices.

Before we left the finca, we also developed a mild obsession with a gravelly-voiced waiter there, who we fondly named Barry White. Barry had a most intriguing, soothing croon, as he cleared the table and served our food. I tried to get a bit of video footage of his strange baritone rumble but I’m not sure it does him justice.

Back in Sóller, I have developed hives. My skin has a tendency to go berserk when faced with too much sun, stress, the wrong food, wrong washing powder – or over-earnest hoteliers. I spent three days itching myself to madness before seeking help.

Luckily, there is a little old lady up the road who may or may not be masquerading as a pharmacist. To attract her attention, you need to ring a bell and she appears from behind a grill to deal with one’s ailments.

We asked for some anti-histamines; she disappeared for a while and then a little hand shot out to hand over the medication and take our money. It was ace.

We became so taken with the little old lady that we have been trying to think up new illnesses – just so we can visit her again. Here I am next to her metal grill and buzzer. When passing tourists saw me having my picture taken, they started snapping away too, convinced the hidden pharmacy was some sort of historic attraction.

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Over in Puerto de Sóller, we attempted to dine at one of the restaurants my coffee shop friend Malcolm recommended. It was full.

I don’t have the heart to tell Malcolm we didn’t end up eating there so I have memorised the menu (‘the rabbit and onions was sublime!’) and snapped the husband posing outside, as photographic proof of our visit.

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The sunbed situation at the current hotel isn’t quite the all-out battle to bag the best bed of previous years. Instead, there’s more underground tactics at work.

Put simply, the pool area is quite small and only about four sunbeds get the sun past 4pm. This means that there’s a secret bed-hopping war at play, in an attempt to secure the best beds at different stages of the day. As a seasoned sunbed bagger, I’m on it.

But at 4pm, people all begin to drag their sunbeds towards the dying rays, creating a sardine-like squash in one corner of the pool (spot the lonesome husband!).

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Owner Matthew prides himself on setting out purple towels throughout the whole pool area (he told us this in great detail) so it’s difficult to ascertain which beds are in use or have been used, having to rely a rudimentary towel ‘crumple test’.

It did make me wonder how Matthew knew which towels to change at the end of the day.

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It was only on Day 2 of our stay here that I uncovered a startling revelation: Matthew DOESN’T change the towels!

Unbeknown to him, I was stealthily spying on Matthew from the behind my copy of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, as the last vestiges of the vermillion sun dipped behind the mountains. Rather than whipping the used towels off the loungers, he merely smoothed them out with a deft flick of the hand.

This means that right now, I am probably lying in the sweat of that meaty man from Room 3.

When we returned from lunch today, chomping on ice creams, jittery Matthew was grinning expectantly from behind his reception desk.

‘Ice-cream!’ he exclaimed, a little too enthusiastically. ‘May I ask where you pur-chase-d your gelato?’

‘I just want to eat my ice-cream in peace,’ muttered the husband, as we returned to our squashed and sweaty sunbeds.

‘Get me back to Barry White… Get me back to the finca!’

The Water In Majorca Don’t Cost Like It Oughta

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After a very cool pool party for my friend’s 40th, which involved plenty of poolside posturing, a private pirate ship and unprecedented amounts of Prosecco in Palma, we are now holed up at a ‘relaxing’ finca in the Majorcan hills.

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It’s very quiet here and there’s not much people-watching to be had.  I’m a little bored. The pool is deathly empty and the air almost still, save for the annoying growl of a nearby generator, which rumbles noisily every 10 minutes – and the occasional buzz of a large and terrifying black bumble bee, which has me leaping dramatically from my lounger every time it buzzes too near.

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Luckily, there’s a slightly eccentric owner to keep us entertained. I think his name is Marc and he has a peculiar English accent – very much Manuel from Fawlty Towers. He answers ‘yayssss’ to everything you ask him.

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His day seems to revolve around two obsessions: the first being where his guests have had enough coffee. This morning, he circled the tables in the quaint courtyard like a persistent pigeon, clutching his large jug of coffee, and calling, ‘Coffee? coffee?’ on repeat. He asked me whether I wanted coffee at least three times this morning and each time I answered ‘no, thank you’. I suspect it’s going to become the soundtrack to our mornings here.

Manuel’s other preoccupation is whether we have set the alarm in our room for ‘security purposes’. Apparently, whenever we leave the room, we should input a convoluted series of letters and numbers (which he proudly presented to us at check-in in a sealed envelope).

He even advised us to set the alarm while we were sleeping! Presumably, this is in case a band of robbers feel the urge to drive miles into the Majorcan hills, smash down our patio doors and steal our suncream. Still, his preoccupation with ‘zee alarm’ is making me feel slightly anxious.

The small smattering of other guests all seem a little bit dull. I think I spotted a Panama hat earlier but it didn’t amount to much. Many of the guests come here to hike the hills, apparently. It’s chill out at it most chilled but I’m beginning to feel quite restless. The husband, on the other hand, seems quite content, immersing himself in a political thriller amid bouts of languid snoozing.

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The downside to staying several miles away from civilisation (apart from obvious first world problems like weak wifi and lukewarm lattes) is that I begin to worry about my water consumption. When we drove up here last night, we foolishly failed to stop at the local Lidl and stock up on several gallons of water.

This means that we are now forced to sip on tiny bottles of water from our minibar at €2.50 a pop. For someone who consumes more water than your average camel, this is proving to be a very expensive basic human need indeed.

Having to dip into any minibar goes against everything I’ve been taught about staying at hotels, rule no 1 being: NEVER touch the minibar, so it is with a certain degree of reluctance that I’ve been forced to hydrate myself this way.

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Scanning the pool for potential characters, my eyes fell upon a fridge in the corner. I ambled over and whipped out two of their meagre 33cl bottles of water, handing one to the husband. A couple of gulps later and it was gone.

‘There’s no way I’m paying €2.50 for that,’ I said, already starting to panic about where my next source of water was coming from.

‘But it’s an honesty bar,’ said the husband, looking askance. ‘And stealing water from it is the height of dishonesty.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m willing to negotiate on a ‘buy one, get one free’ deal; I’ll write down that we had one bottle of water. And that’s being generous!’

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‘How about a 3 for 2 deal, like Boots?’ said the husband.

‘Fair enough,’ I said.

I pottered back over but I couldn’t find a pen. I gave up and headed back to the lounger.

‘I’ve been giving it some more thought,’ said the husband, clearly warming to this new life of criminality. ‘Those overpriced bottles of water are actually comically small; they wouldn’t hydrate a mouse.

‘Let’s come back in the dead of night and grab as many bottles as we can.’

Cocoon’d in Madeira

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Eyes down for a full house! We’re on a pensioners’ vacation in Madeira.

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When I mentioned I’d booked an Easter break to Madeira, I couldn’t find a single soul who had holidayed here. Friends’ reactions varied from polite curiosity, open-jawed incredulity, and the no-holds barred, ‘WTF? Isn’t that where all the old biddies go?’

To be fair, the reviews for our hotel read a little something like this… ‘Having just recovered from a heart attack, a trip to the Cliff Bay was just the tonic…’ and ‘Cliff Bay was the perfect place to celebrate our Golden Wedding Anniversary…’.

Great, I thought, there’ll be no rowdy horse-play around the pool, no blaring bar music and the ageing residents – me included – will be tucked up in bed by 10pm. It sounded like my kind of holiday.

The husband was also wholly underwhelmed by news of the impending excursion.

To be fair, I did book it on a whim while he was busy lording it up – P Diddy style – on a ‘business’ trip to Miami, in what is purported to be the city’s trendiest hotel (the Fontain Bleu, for those interested). To a Miami socialite, Madeira is a bit of a step down.

In a final attempt to prove Madeira wasn’t just for the over 60s, I Wikipediaed the capital Funchal, where we were staying.

One statement stood out above the rest: ‘Madeira has drawn ailing visitors since the 19th Century. Many were so ill that they never made it home; they are buried in Funchal’s unassuming British cemetery.’

Jesus.

So it was with some misgivings that the husband and I boarded the flight to Funchal. As we suspected, there was a sea of grey heads stretching as far as the eye could see.

The flight itself was a very civilised affair. Large queues for the toilets admittedly, but lots of friendly, smiling elders (and not a lager lout in sight).

And when the captain announced that there was no charge for the trolleys at the airport, there was a collective ripple of approval from the silver-haired masses.

It was a seamless glide through baggage collection and a pleasant taxi ride to our hotel. Madeira was as pretty as you’d imagine: terracotta-roofed villas dotted the lush green landscape and as the taxi wove down the steep hills, the Atlantic sparked alluringly in the distance.

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We decided to take an evening stroll along the promenade. Due to its influx of the more mature visitor, the island had an unhurried and relaxed feel to it – a stark contrast to our usual frenetic lives.

As we trundled past many golden oldies with their walking sticks, we spotted a man unzipping the bottom portion of his trousers to turn them into shorts. I privately thought this was quite an ingenious idea.

‘If I ever wear shorts with zip off leg bits or open-toed sandals with or without socks, shoot me on the spot,’ said the husband.

‘One day, we’ll be old too,’ I mused.

‘We will,’ the husband agreed. ‘But I still won’t ever wear open-toed sandals. I will retain my keen aesthetic eye.’

Back at the hotel room, I weighed up our rather large bed.

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At first glance, it appeared to be a super king – in fact bigger than super king (uber king?!) But on closer inspection, I realised it was in fact two large single beds, each with their own separate sheets.

This meant an end to the husband hogging the duvet, digs from stray limbs in the night, or in-your-ear snoring… Here was the future of slumber. And I liked it.

Next door to our hotel, perched atop the hillside was the grand dame itself, Reid’s Palace – former holiday residence of Winston Churchill, no less. Visiting it for drinks one evening, I instantly fell in love.

Black and white photographs adorned the grand tiled entrance and the cocktail lounge was straight out of Mad Men. There was even a bridge room!

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The clientele were nearly as old as the walls themselves: all Panama hats and cream suits, sipping Martinis with shaky hands, while haughty waiters circled officiously. It was timeless elegance and OTT pomposity at its finest. I felt like I’d stepped back into the 50s.

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Romanticism aside, there’s another advantage to being on a senior citizen’s break: no need to rise at the crack of dawn to seize a sunbed (see last year’s Battle Of The Sun Beds in Croatia).

The elderly, it seems (with the exception of the occasional sun-baked wrinkly) prefer to seek shade, rather than bask in the Portuguese sun. By midday, there was still a bountiful supply of available loungers. The gym was virtually empty too.

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I lay on my sunbed for a couple of hours. There wasn’t a soul around. I started to get bored.

I missed people-watching; the occasional booming bronze-bellied buffoon to chuckle at (see The Ghost of Holidays Past)… Hell, I even missed the race to secure the most coveted sun-lounger.

I was on a Saga holiday and I wanted a saga.

‘It’s too quiet,’ I groaned, prodding the husband with my big toe.

The husband merely gave a sanctimonious smile, popped his headphones in, and closed his eyes.

He was only one step away from a pair of open-toed sandals.

The Ghost of Holidays Past

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The annual Great Summer Holiday Hunt began in earnest about two months ago. First, there was the decision of where to go (France/ Italy/ Greece/ Bognor Regis…).

Next, was choosing a hotel (not too big, not too small, sizeable pool area, walking distance of a restaurants, preferably nestling alongside a picturesque harbour with postcard-perfect houses in pastel colours artfully positioned on the hillside – I don’t ask for much) and thirdly: Can it live up to our favourite hotel?

The problem with finding a hotel that you love is that you start comparing all other hotels to it – and sometimes they just don’t live up to the benchmark.

Last year, we went to Lindos Blu in Rhodes. In my mind it was the perfect hotel, pitching itself somewhere between boutique and medium-sized, offering a relaxing adults-only pool area gazing onto the Aegean sea, with plenty of scope for people-watching; attentive staff with just the right level of fuss; and a large, modern room with all the extras you’d hope for – such as a hot tub and a sunken bath. Lindos Blu was going to be a hard act to follow.

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And when it came to booking this year’s hotel, I couldn’t find anywhere that looked quite as good as Lindos Blu. After many hours trawling Tripadvisor (no matter how many excellent reviews there are, I always seem to home in on the negatives: ‘there was a pungent odour emanating from the bathroom… the food was barely edible’), I delivered the news to the husband that we might be heading back to our old friend Lindos Blu.

‘So you’re telling me that out of all the hotels in Europe, you can’t find a single suitable hotel?’ said the husband, with an air of weariness.

‘That’s about the size of it,’ I said. ‘It’s going to have to be Lindos Blu Part 2. We’ll be one of those strange couples who go to the same hotel and ask for the same room every year.

‘Unless…’ I added. ‘We play the wild card.’

‘Let’s play the wild card,’ said the husband. He thinks people who visit the same place year after year are a bit strange.

The wild card was a little-known hotel called Monte Mulini, perched atop a quaint harbour town called Rovinj in northern Croatia. It looked lovely.

So here we are, gazing out at the Istrian sea, lying on one of our hard-won sun-loungers, cheek to jowl with an uber-boobed Russian nuzzling her catalogue boy lover.

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It turns out that Rovinj isn’t so ‘little-known’ after all. In fact, half of Europe appears to have descended on the place. When we landed at the hotel yesterday afternoon, it was a beautiful sight… with just one problem: there wasn’t a single sun-lounger free – just scores of bare-breasted women and splashing children as far as the eye could see (okay, so the photo paints a serene scene but on ground level, it was a different story).

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‘This would never happen at Lindos Blu,’ I thought.

This morning, we rose and headed down for breakfast, passing the pool en route. Already, the hordes had descended, reserving nearly every sun lounger with a carefully-placed magazine or sunhat.

‘This is ridiculous,’ I thought. On principal, I don’t believe in reserving sun loungers pre-breakfast. I blame the Germans. They started this.

‘If you can beat ’em, join ’em,’ said the husband, throwing down his towel on one of the last remaining loungers and placing his Kindle on it territorially.

We headed up for breakfast; there wasn’t a single table free.

‘We would never had to queue at Lindos Blu,’ I grumbled.

He husband rolled his eyes.

‘And what’s more… I MISS NIGEL!’ I added, dramatically.

Nigel was a fellow holiday maker at Lindos Blu last year: a big-bellied booming man with an ego the size of France. He was the very dictionary definition of a ‘bon viveur’, greeting the staff by their first names and regaling his captive audience with tales of far-flung travel destinations.

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Occasionally, he would dive noisily into the pool and embark on a couple of lengths of butterfly – limbs akimbo – emerging to bellow down the phone at his harassed PA, before continuing his convivial chat with other poolside posers.

Basically, he provided hours of entertainment. We pretended that he was the most irritating guest imaginable but when he departed mid-way through the week, he left a big hole in our holiday.

‘We all miss Nigel,’ said the husband wistfully, as he gazed down the snaking line of people awaiting a table for breakfast.

And then he uttered the words that neither of us had dared to voice.

‘Get me back to Lindos Blu’.

Gym Buddies

by

The gym is rapidly becoming a no-go area. After my close encounter with a former flame the other week, I seem to have made the acquaintance of another character who I’m avoiding with equal determination.

My new friend – let’s call him Big Grey Man – first made an appearance when I was queuing for a post-swim, pre-work coffee. Me: flustered and late as usual; Him: big and grey – and overly eager to chat.

‘We meet again…’ he said, as I approached the coffee queue. I actually turned around to look behind me, so convinced I was that he couldn’t be talking to me. He was.

It transpired that we had also been queuing for a coffee together the week before (quelle surprise!), and exchanged the very smallest of pleasantries – an encounter so inconsequential that I had completely forgotten it had ever happened. Obviously he hadn’t.

And so began one of those awkward conversations, where I try hard not to engage with him on any level (short monotone sentences usually do the trick), and he tries his hardest to keep up the patter. I feel a little mean because Big Grey Man is perfectly pleasant. But I have a rule about the gym: I don’t believe in communicating with anyone whilst there. I just want to get in, do 30 lengths in the pool, and exit – all with minimum human interaction.

This was tested about two years ago when I was reluctantly befriended by Lipo Liza – a woman who regularly had several pints of fat removed from her stomach and thighs, and seemed hellbent on sharing the details of this gruesome procedure with me – at 6.30 in the morning. It wasn’t just her thighs that got airtime though: I knew all about her job (she hated it), mother (hated her), ex-boyfriend (hated him) and many other details which I would not want to inflict upon you. Luckily, her newly-thinned thighs led her to new-found love and she moved somewhere down South, finally leaving me in peace.

Another strange specimen at the gym is Mad Army Woman. You know those people who like to Make A Scene at the gym by huffing and puffing loudly, pacing up and down and doing exaggerated stretches? She’s one of them. While the rest of the morning swimmers are quietly getting on with their lengths, she’s busy doing her own peculiar routine, which as far as I can see involves angrily striding up and down the pool in a full wet suit (she’s about the size of a small bungalow), pausing to eat half a banana, taking two controlled swigs of Lucozade and then – bizarrely – circling the jacuzzi in figures of eight, thrashing through the water in an exaggerated army march. It’s quite frightening.

Back to my new friend though…

Big Grey Man: We obviously have the same routine!

Me (feigning interest in the coffee menu): Hmm…

Big Grey Man: I didn’t see you last week though?

Me: My car broke down.

Big Grey Man: Really? What was wrong with it?

Me (yawn): The alternator. (Yawn. Yawn.)

You get the idea.

I finally managed to escape but as was crossing the car park, there he was – honking his horn and waving manically.

I hoped that my interaction with him would be limited to the pre-work coffee queue. But when I went down to the pool this week, lo and behold, he was there – sat in the jacuzzi, beaming like a mentalist and waving at me (again!). Crazily, he was chatting to Mad Army Woman (who appeared to be on stage seven of her drill: Stop circling jacuzzi for three minutes and eat second half of banana). They both seemed to be staring at me. Big Grey Man waved again.

What next? Inviting me to join them in the jacuzzi? Chatting to me in the steam room? (attempting to strike up a conversation in the steam room is strictly taboo in my eyes).

At least Lipo Liza had entertaining stories in her quest to fight the flab. Big Grey Man offers nothing but big greyness and Mad Army Woman nothing but drill-sergeant lunacy. I didn’t want to be part of their weird jacuzzi club.

I dunked my head under the water and swam away – with a little theatrical splash of my own.