More of the nightmare family seemed to have turned up or maybe there were just more of them than I thought and I realised today as they were shouting to each other from their balconies that we are sandwiched between two lots of them. It seems bad planning as each room is paired with another and there's even access to the next balcony via a gate with a door handle shaped like a penis (accidentally I think - you decide) and it would have made a lot more sense to put these shouting lunatics next to each other so they didn't have to shout so much (not that that would stop them - they shout at each other even when they are sitting right next to each other). I was out for a peaceful swim and a boisterous adolescent member of the shouty family was snorkelling nearby. But another one of them was up in the alfresco restaurant and was shouting down to him in the lagoon and he was shouting back. They were some distant apart. It somewhat disrupted the calm of my swim. Then the one from the cafe started walking back towards the rooms - the path set behind the houses some forty feet from the water. It didn't stop him shouting to his unseen relative. I don't know what they were shouting about as they don't speak English (except when they are impatiently shouting "Hello" at the staff in the restaurant who have the audacity to be serving someone who isn't them), but I will allow your own xenophobia to allow you to dictate what country they may be from.
I got back to my balcony and tried to read the sample chapter of Stephen Fry's rather too self-conscious new autobiography on my Kindle (I love Fry and still enjoyed it, but it is annoyingly apologetic and over-written and what makes it worse is that he actually apologises for both being verbose and apologetic), but the shouting between the two rooms either side continued and then some of the family swam out to the edge of the algoon fifty feet away so they could shout from there. So we cut our losses and went for lunch.
But there are so many members of this family (or maybe I have become paranoid and have started to think anyone who doesn't seem to give a fuck about anyone but themselves is one of them) that there is no escape. A small island can be a heaven or a hell.
We sat in the blazing sun and ordered our food, but immediately behind us in the pool was a middle aged man who alternated between doing some kind of bizarre exercise where he cut his arms like blades through the water whilst standing and spitting over the edge of the pool. Proper loud full on spitting. Not just once, but over and over again. I thought that nothing could be worse than the shouting, but it turns out that a man who is otherwise silent, but who spits at unpredicatable intervals while you're trying to eat is actually more annoying.
I would have gone to punch him but he looked like he was an expert in some kind of underwater martial art so we tried to ignore it and let it go. I could see other people bristling at this behaviour, but there was no Tubeman to come and save us and we all just accepted that in the land where the spitting man comes from, spitting over the edge of a pool right next to where others are eating or drinking is not impolite and is possibly in some way a sort of a compliment. You can't judge other people's cultures. Burping is polite in some countries so why shouldn't unnecessary flobbing also be some form of happy greeting. I was sat with my back to him so could never be sure if the spit was going over the edge of the pool, into the pool or maybe towards us. Perhaps this was an ageing punk rocker.
After lunch we sat by the pool, but of course the shouting part of the clan now decided it was time for lunch and came and sat together round the bar, still shouting even though none of them was more than four feet from the furthest one. Most of them at least had the excuse that they were young and clearly the spitting thing is generational because none of them hawked up anything the whole time they were there, but another of the middle aged generation lit up a cigarette just at the point where the breeze would carry the fumes over everyone else by the pool. Others chose to leave the pool and maybe head for a hammock on the beach, but I have a feeling that other members of the family would have occupied that territory. I felt there was no point in moving because inevitably this whirlwind of ululation and phlegm would follow us wherever we went. I read some Kurt Vonnegut short stories that I had somehow never seen before and managed to largely ignore the disruption. Though I was silently planning the murder of each and every one of them. There are no police out here and I am sure my fellow holiday makers would happily enter a Murder on the Orient Express style pact where we killed them and fed their bodies to the stingrays and all denied ever having seen them. It would take some kind of Columbo (maybe coming from nearby Colombo) to think of looking at this blog and seeing full details of the plan.
Still in spite of these occasional disruptions we're mostly having a relaxing and peaceful time (although as I write this on my balcony I can genuinely hear the sound of spitting from next door). The speed with which the days are passing is somewhat disconcerting and it's going to be over all too soon. And at least these annoyances will act as a kind of decompression chamber to help ease us back into the selfishness of London life.
And by the way, we're still putting out podcasts even though I am away! The latest is a retro-podcast that I found when I was dumping stuff off the hard drive of my computer - a pretend podcast from a 2006 Andrew Collings show on 6Music, which we briefly tried to start up before we were told we weren't allowed. It's just the chatty bits from my half hour on that show stuck together with the music taken out, but it's an interesting look into our history and to a time when we still liked each other, mainly because we didn't know then what a dick the other one actually was. Anyway listen to me still in my thirties
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