8303/21222
Sadly Mark Watson didn't have the imagination or bravery to end his book with an alien invasion. But I enjoyed it nonetheless. Time to see is Sebastian Faulks has bigger cajones and the foresight to end his sortabiography with the Earth being destroyed. He didn't have the literary chops to come up with the descriptor “sortabiography”, going for the less classy "Ten Essays in Search of a Memoir". Amateur. It seems he even lost his bottle with that one after sending out preview copies
and it's now subtitled "A Life in Progress." Sortabiography, mate. It was staring you in the face.
This one isn't out yet, but I have been sent a copy by his publicist and hopefully Faulks will be a guest on an upcoming podcast. Which is mind-blowing to me. He's a proper heavyweight. I was pleased to get Olaf Falafel on.
The kids went off on a trip in a semi-submarine this morning and we were too late to nab our usual loungers, but got two in the row behind. My phone wielding nemesis was around, but quieter today.
An elderly American lady next to us got immediately annoyed because someone had brought little kids into the adults only bit (though it's unclear if it's just the pool or the whole area that is adults only - there's no point in looking for signage as that means nothing anyway). We had our kids with us at this point too, though were about to take them to the kids club and (for once) they were making no noise. It seemed pretty clear that this other gaggle of smaller kids were unlikely to stay in this area as there was nothing for them to do, but the American lady stropped away, complaining to us as she went.
"I came down here to get away from my own noisy grandchildren" she complained, "I thought this was adults only."
I didn't like her and when Phoebe pointed out that she'd left her tablet behind I thought we shouldn't tell the old grump who hated children, even ones related to her. Catie is nicer than me and as we were heading to the lift too we caught up with her and it was mentioned, but she'd left it for her husband.
Again she claimed about the children. Ernie said, "But we're children" and she said that they were OK because they were well-behaved. "For these thirty seconds," I pointed out, but she tried to backtrack. Maybe she was a nice grandma usually and just in a bad mood. "I didn't even want to come on this holiday" she complained. Though it was hard to be sympathetic as we're in such a lovely hotel and beautiful spot and being served by staff specifically selected to look like Asterix characters.
Sometimes it doesn't matter where you are or how fortunate you are being, you'll never be happy.
But then I was putting my kids in kids club, which having read about Sebastian Faulks' early life felt like a mini-version of putting them in boarding school so we could have a quiet life - so maybe I was being a hypocrite. They were going on a fucking submarine though so maybe I shouldn't feel too bad!
