The holiday is flying by at indecent speed, especially given how little we're actually doing. It takes a while to get into the pace of a holiday and overcome jetlag, but I woke this morning feeling relaxed and happy and very lucky to have this chance to unwind in such beautiful surroundings. The stresses of our day to day lives can bring us down so it's good to be reminded that life is a cool thing to be a part of.
I keep failing to escape my daily life in my reading matter though. I finished off "One Day" by David Nicholls, which has a rather neat trick of following a couple over the course of 20 or so years by documenting the same day each year, demonstrating their ups and downs. But not only are the couple more or less my age and so at University in the mid-80s, but the man goes on to become a TV star in the 90s and then not in the 2000s, likes to drink and is desperate for a threesome.... And the early part of the novel is set in Edinburgh and the couple climb Arthur's Seat just a couple of weeks before I would arrive in town to do the doomed Oxford Revue of 1988. It's an enjoyable holiday read and neatly captures the moods of each year, such as the oppressively right-on attitudes of 1980s students and the hedonism and arrogance/insecurities of twentysomethings in the mid-90s. I am pretty sure that I was drinking in most of the places that Dexter was drinking in then, though thankfully not quite as much as him. There is also a character of a terrible stand up comedian (who I am more like than the cool and handsome Dexter) although I think he's probably even a little bit too generically cats and dogs terrible to make a go of it for as long as he does. I enjoyed it anyway, despite it feeling a bit unsettling that my generation can now be written about in this way and how similar we all clearly were. Then I moved on to Richard Dawkins' "The Greatest Show on Earth". If I end up mentioned in this one or if he discusses the evolution of comedy in the 1990s then I am going to get a bit freaked out. I am meant to be escaping my life here. Though I suppose that I am the product (and in many ways the pinnacle) of evolution, so I will be able to see some of myself even in this one.
I went snorkelling in the morning, though still swallowing a bit too much seawater. It's lots of fun though and at one point I found myself swimming behind one of the less exceptional grey fish who are outshone by their more colourful and mint-resembling neighbours. But I was keeping up with him for a while so decided to follow him. He twisted and turned a bit, but I manouevred myself to carry on in his wake. But then I became conscious that I might be scaring hin. Did he think he was being stalked by prey? Was that a look of panic in his eye? Or was I just making him self-conscious and paranoid? "Is that blubbery seal thing following me?"
As one of the less showy fish he probably wouldn't be used to people taking an interest in him. He just gets on with his life in anonymity and I was genuinely concerned that this new found and random celebrity might freak him out. So I left him to go on his way unimpeded. I didn't want to turn into a member of the underwater paparazzi. My girlfriend was taking pictures with her snazzy underwater camera. I just hope to God we didn't send any innocent creature crashing into some coral to avoid us.
All this swimming is doing my no end of good and I am also managing to pop down to the gym every evening. I might for once come out of a holiday a bit fitter than when I started. I had a couple more drinks tonight, including my first beer, but I am still not really enjoying it. The first sip is always lovely, especially with the beer, but the second sip tasted exactly like the first mouthful of lager I ever had - a can of Heineken bought from a supermarket in London in about 1981, when the Kings of Wessex brass band had come to take part in a competition at the Purcell Rooms. I had been persuaded to do the actually purchasing of the cans and somehow even though I was 13 and looked about 11 I managed to buy a four pack. And they tasted horrible. Just like the second sip tonight. Are me and alcohol finished now? It's been a long relationship. We came on holiday together to try and rekindle the old romance, but even in these paradise surroundings we can't recapture the old magic. I could write my own version of "One Day" about it. Or maybe I will just have to spend the rest of my life taking the delicious first sip and not bothering with any of the others.
