Another Sunday and the beach was full of ex-pats with their spoilt kids making too much noise and ruining our idyll. I suppose it proves we're in a great spot when the locals come to spend their day off here, but it slightly ruins the feeling of isolation and tranquility that is built up for the rest of the time. There were some particularly boisterous kids playing cricket with their mum and dad, the eldest of whom would go into a furious sulk every time he wasn't batting. I am sure I was equally stupid and annoying as a 7 year old, but it's amazing how it takes our supposedly intelligent brains so long to get the concept that it's only fair if we share.
Later these same blond and pampered brats started having a pretend sword fight using two empty beer bottles. They were crashing the bottles against each other and yet none of the adults who were with them were batting an eyelid at this dangerous and stupid behaviour.
My football loving friend saw the potential for mishap and went across to the boys and relieved them of their weapons and then gave a general cry out to see if anyone was in charge of these ruffians. No one claimed responsibility.
Using detective work (seeing a group of adults drinking beer) he went across to ask if they were looking after the boys and indeed they were. He told them that maybe they should be more vigilant and explained that they had been playing with bottles, but no one seemed that concerned and in fact as he left I heard the father loudly protesting that someone should mind their own business, before returning the empty bottles to his kids.
The gigantic prick.
The kids staying at the hotel are actually all rather sweet. They're a little bit younger than the brood who were down today, but actually much better behaved. They mainly make me laugh. I would say there is little I love more than three year old girls, but it might lead to a misunderstanding. So let me say instead say there is nothing I love more than naked three year old girls. Oh dear, it's got worse. But what I mean is I love the freedom that young kids have, that they can be sitting in a pool of muddy sand with no pants on, talking to themselves and breaking into spontaneous song and no one bats an eyelid. But if I did the same then many eyelids would be batted. And so would my head. Probably by an obnoxious kid who didn't want anyone else to have a turn with the bat.
But you have to envy that freedom and that joie de vivre. It's just a shame that any of us ever grow up even a little bit.
I still managed to have a mainly restful day, despite the unwelcome and irresponsible interlopers.
And reading my Pompeii book I realised that congratulations are due to the graffiti writers of that doomed city. They lived the dream. Most people scrawl on toilet walls and on the outside of buildings in the hope of some kind of immortality, to register that they were here, having a shit, or a shag in an alley or just insulting some person who has crossed them. Or just drawing a strange indecipherable tag. Yet their work will usually disappear in a matter of weeks, maybe years if they are lucky.
But the graffiti writers of Pompeii lived the dream and thanks to their untimely destruction their stupid thoughts and boasts and insults and sometimes their names are still here 2000 years later and being written about in academic tomes. Just hope that next time you write "Here I came to sit and shit" on a wall that you will be instantaneously vaporised by a volcano and that in 4009 some silver clad academic will be pontificating on what you meant by that.
But big up to the Pompeiian graffitiers. You surpassed yourselves.
