7424/19944
Morning broke and we saw where we’re staying. The Mediterranean is very blue and the water very clear, probably because there isn’t a whole nation’s raw sewage floating around in it. The hotel is grand and amazing if a little soulless and the staff are extremely keen to please and the food is all amazing. I don’t think we’ve ever been somewhere this posh for a week long break before. And it’s an interesting experience to live this life, if only briefly. I suspect most of the other people here have this kind of service all the time. We are very fortunate that we get to experience stuff like this every now and again - if it is your default setting you must get very entitled and be unable to enjoy it. The waiting staff apologised so profusely when they made a mistake that I suspect that they are very used to cunts expecting everything to be perfect. I’d swum over to the bar in the swimming pool to order Phoebe a milkshake, which is insanely decadent and we sat in the stools in the water. Ernie was with his mum on a sun lounger and I didn’t fancy carrying a milkshake through the pool, so I asked if a waiter could take it over to him. I felt as guilty as Hell about that, but everyone was happy. But the milkshake didn’t get delivered and so then I had to think of a polite way to enquire about when my 5 year old son was getting the milkshake that I was too lazy to carry to him. I waited ages and finally meekly asked about it and the waiter who was supposed to have brought it over was told off and then rushed it over and full of apologies. The wrong person was apologising and I told him it was really OK and he looked like I’d just spared his family from execution. Later in the restaurant the lady serving us dropped a bottle of wine and it splashed on to Catie. I think some other guests might have kicked off here, but Catie took the drenching in good spirits. I remembered the occasion when out for a rowdy Christmas Italian meal with my University friends the waitress (accidentally?) tipped an entire carafe of red wine down my back. I probably deserved it, but I took it pretty well. Both my wife and I are the kind of people who will apologise when someone has done something to us.
The other guests are probably not judging us, but it feels like they are - how did these people get through the door with their iPad toting kids? If they found out that it was mainly due to me talking about my cock for 30 years then I think they might insist we were asked to leave.
So we sat by the pool, went down to the stony beach where Phoebe tried to bury Ernie (with his enthusiastic consent) in shaly sand, ate nice food and chilled out. I played ping pong against Phoebe who has never played before, but like all sport, picked it up pretty quickly. I played a lot of ping pong as a kid though, so this is one sport that it will take her a little while to get better than me. The tables were on a slope and we had to chase the ball a few times. On one occasion it went right down the path towards a mother with a pram. She let go of the pram to try and catch the ball and the pram started wheeling towards the steps down to the beach. I feared a Battleship Potemkin moment (or the Untouchables if you’re not as clever as me), and instinctively went for the pram (because I am hero), but luckily the mother caught it and crucially it was empty. Maybe the baby had already fallen out.
It’s all pretty good so far. Maybe after a week I will have turned into the kind of wanker who expects someone to be sacked for not delivering a milkshake fast enough, but for now I remain a man of the people. Trying to bring the system down from the inside. But only after a good thirty years of infiltration, just so he can be a really effective revolutionary when the time comes.
