Spanish Fly - Sunday

‘I’m not sure we belong here.’ I tell my wife as we search in vain for a couple of non-towelled sun beds. You have to invade the pool early to get a space before these surprisingly sprightly ex-Nazi youths, stake a claim.

‘You are just being foreign-phobic again.’ Hisses my wife, ‘Bet you couldn’t take that attitude at work.’ She continues, as I spot the only free beds are next to the shaded shower where I refuse to soak myself before jumping in the pool. Needless to say the portly Bavarians all follow orders.

She’s right. I don’t discriminate where property is concerned. Not only is it illegal but it’s counter-productive. Without offshore money there’d certainly be a lot of London agents looking to renegotiate their rents, and lazy journalists might need to leave the Central Line for their next glossy interior story.

‘I mean who thought people still wore Speedos outside of the Olympic diving pool?’ I say, as the man I’ve nicknamed Dead Elvis strides by. This scrawny octogenarian sports an improbable silver-coloured quiff and leopard print trunks. His leathery skin is tanned to ebony brown and has more lines than a cyclone affected weather map. I wouldn’t let him within five miles of a school.

‘And here come the Munich festival crew.’ I grumble, as a group of retired German bankers - who else can afford to stop work while they can still herd shopping trolleys round an Asda car park – arrive at the pool bar and order their first beers of the morning. In the cheaper, locals’ bars behind the beach, unemployed Spanish men are also drinking alcohol with a spooky symmetry.

The overweight German men are already in their skimpy, unappetisingly saggy swimsuits, and their perma-tanned wives sport garish prints on their blouses that match their varicose-veined legs. The males wear more gold reserves around their necks and wrists than the Greek economy can muster. I start to yearn for some kids to disrupt the smug air of entitlement and maybe wet this bunch on the outside with the sort of bombs that didn’t remodel Coventry.

‘Don’t check you work emails.’ Scolds my wife as we get out of the midday sun ahead of the mad dogs. I’ve just had a shameful rant that the overworked maid, on a minimum wage sweating in a nylon uniform, hasn’t cleaned our room yet. The naivety of my punk rock anarchist days never seemed further away.

‘I need to know what they are up to.’ I tell my wife switching on my netbook and failing to find a strong enough Wi-Fi signal again. We’ve changed room once already and the receptionist insists on greeting me with a curt, Guten Morgen before breakfast every day. I can’t make another fuss.

‘The office will survive without you.’ Continues my wife so reasonably I want to bark a couple of angry Halts Mauls at her. The paradox is, I ached to escape the office and now I feel like starting a tunnel to get back there. Maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome, my geography is all over the place, so who knows?

‘What did that achieve?’ Asks my wife as we go back to the hotel terrace for a pricey coffee, as there is no kettle in the room. We’ll be taking the tea bags back home again then.

‘Not a lot.’ I acknowledge. The asinine work emails I’ve just scanned made me testier than ever and now my shorts are feeling so tight I reckon I’ll need to concede to the next waist size up when we next travel. All this food and alcohol is starting to take its toll, my liver is grumbling as much as I do and I’ve a feeling I’ll still be finding sand in places I didn’t know I had, in February.

‘No we don’t want any fake sunglasses.’ I snap at the African lad flogging knock-off designer shades with authentic looks and all the UV protection you’d get popping you pants on your head. Then the smokers sit next to us, something I now find as offensive as someone squatting down and taking a dump alongside you.

Auf Wiedersehen. 

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Weather With You - Sunday

‘Here comes the prat with the ponytail.’ I tell my wife interrupting her reading. We both have Kindles and pleasingly about a quarter of the sun-frazzled bodies grouped around the pool are also using digital e-book devices. I can’t help wondering if any of them might be reading my book? It’s statistically unlikely. The majority of women using analogue technology – paper and ink – are conspicuously reading Fifty Shades Of Grey, enough to truly depress any wannabe writer. I should do soft porn S & M, not hard-core bricks & mortar.

‘Don’t make comments about people so loudly.’ My wife chides as the grey-haired man with the single plait walks by in too-tight Speedos and enough gold jewellery to fund a third-world coup.

‘He’s old enough to know better.’ I whisper, thinking you can’t Blog loud enough. Not nearly loud enough.

‘And now it’s the ugly sisters.’ I tell her, comment as involuntary as a nervous twitch, as two gruesome women in their thirties, with matching stomachs and spectacles, wobble towards the all-day buffet.

‘You are so rude.’ Pronounces my wife disapprovingly. What she seems to forget is I spend 48 weeks of the year being polite to oddball members of the public. In sales you are acting a part. It’s nice not to be a thespian occasionally I think, as right on cue the lesbian couple stroll past. Now I’m all for equality, some of my best customers have been gay, but I’m still bristling at the trousers only dinner rule, for men. Last night as I sweated in heavy jeans I only brought for the flight, the crop-haired masculine half of the pairing - the one who wears the strap-on I’m guessing - bounced in to the restaurant wearing grotesque shorts and nobody objected – other than me.

‘This is a people watching paradise.’ I tell her as the two women take the sun beds they’ve had reserved with towels since a pre-dawn sortie, despite it being early afternoon.

‘You might actually want to meet a few people, not just critique them.’ Sighs the missus, pushing the page-turner on her Kindle and tutting loudly. I don’t. I’m luxuriating in not having to talk to new people. Not having to flatter them on personality, price and property. Not having to explain what I do for a living. It’s far more fun to observe.

‘German.’ I hiss, as an old leathery-faced man bent double by his belly, shuffles past clutching a beer, incongruously wearing a £150 pair of Nike running shoes, presumably to help him get to the free bar faster. All-inclusive is proving to be a mistake, as even I have broken a cardinal rule and started drinking in the daytime. You can tell from what’s on their plate the sort of personality traits individuals have. Narcissistic, control-freak types hold plates bearing a few frugal fruits, and have the body shape to match. Greedy, weak-willed characters can’t help piling the food so high it totters as they waddle to their table. I just get pissed.

‘Check the t-shirt out.’ I tell my wife and she raises her eyes reluctantly. A woman with a lithe-figure but certainly not English as a first language, is wearing a capped-sleeve number with the legend Make Love Baby picked out in diamante.

‘Should I tell her?’ I ask mischievously.

‘Don’t even think about it.’

‘There’s a whole book, right here right now.’ I announce incredulously, but she just clicks to another page.

Then some arsehole’s phone rings loudly and I growl in anger. I’ve tried not to think of work for five days. I’ve studiously avoided the free Wi-Fi area by reception where saddos with no life and a handful of ginger-haired people who should have booked the Scandinavian cruise, gather to check their messages and avoid the sun.

‘Tell them I want the contract exchanged by close of business or the deal is off.’ Barks the man into his BlackBerry to some far-off subordinate, possibly his estate agent. My heart sinks faster than the bloater who just attempted to mount an airbed from the poolside and bounced straight off.

Until now it had been going swimmingly.

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Poolside reading with an anonymous front cover.

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