The Towel/Sunlounger dilemma.

Let's see.  Either I get up at the crack of dawn and fling a towel on a vacant plastic recliner or I arrive too late and have to mask my venom with a radiant smile as I wander round enquiring whether there might be a chance of nabbing one that isn't actually occupied. If you don't mind.  Shame on you.

'Excuse me.  Do you need these six loungers?'

'Yes.  You should have come earlier.'

'And you should be boiled in oil.'

Of course I don't say anything like this.  Not out loud, anyway. But I would like to have the nerve to just take off the towel and plonk myself down.  Can you imagine the seconds of satisfaction?

As it is, I generally find a normal chair, borrowed from a lifeguard, and pretend to enjoy myself until someone leaves.  Then, I jump up and race for the lounger, trampling small children and slow movers  to get there first.

I drag my lounger back towards the shade of my palm tree and tan safely, marvelling at the amount of chorizo coloured flesh oozing in its various forms all around me.

The pool is full of people.  There is nowhere to swim.  I read my book and swig my warm drink, wishing that my sunglasses were not so heavy on my nose.  Should I have paid more for some better ones? 

 

I wonder whether I would rather not be here at all. But I am on holiday and I must make the most of the pool. It's free and set in acres of beautiful pine forest.

I am hot and uncomfortable.  Perhaps I should go for a quick dip.  Just to cool off.  I stand, stretch and move gracefully towards the pool.  The lifeguard blows a whistle and people swim or lumber to the sides, climbing out as fast as they can.

A turd has been found and the pool will close for twelve hours.

Next morning the alarm rings and I think about reserving a lounger.  Then I go back to sleep.  After all, it's not fair to reserve a lounger if you're not actually using it, is it?  And I reason that the muscles I will use to glare at the smug lounger-baggers after a leisurely breakfast, will do wonders for wrinkle prevention. 

 

 I think briefly about where I might purchase a plastic turd.

 

So, where do you stand on the towel/sunlounger issue.  And don't lie, because I'll know. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Short excerpt from Bunny on a Bike

South of France dream goddess bikini

We were shown into a curtained changing room and told to put on our swimwear.  There were girls everywhere, exposing various parts of their generally perfect bodies.  I wished I hadn’t eaten so much at breakfast and wondered whether I too should have topped up with some fungal-smelling Quicktan.  Carol got a Bic razor out of her bag and did a tidy up of her bikini line much to the horror of a tall Italian-looking girl who was stuffing paper into her bikini top.

‘Did you bring the yellow one?’  Carol asked.

‘Of course.’  It was my South of France dream-goddess bikini, which had won general acclaim at ‘La Sirene Camping’ the previous summer.  Guaranteed to get you noticed, although not yet tested in an interview situation.

‘Bitch!’

‘Now, now.  No seething in public.  Did you bring your space-girl bikini?’

‘No.’

‘She did.’ I nodded towards a girl wearing a silver two-piece with an intricate choker arrangement around her neck.  Very Barbarella.

‘God, look at my blotches!  These mirrors must be wrong.’  Carol was examining the fronts of her thighs, which looked as though they had been tie-died.

I pondered the idea of wrong mirrors.

‘Viviana, please!’  The Italian-looking girl was in fact Italian and she was next.  She turned and gave us what can only be described as a deprecating sneer, stepped gracefully through the curtains and disappeared with her perfect ass in tow.

‘Did you see her cellulite?’  Carol scowled.

‘No?’ I said.

‘Neither did I.’

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Short excerpt from Bunny on a Bike

The tube station was not far from the casino and when it came into sight I thought it looked more like an enormous, ungainly office block.  It was on pillars, but not the classical kind, and it looked so, so wrong.  The windows were high up and masked by long curtains, which presumably hid the bright, luxurious interior.  I suppose I thought the building would be grander, more ornate – dripping with wealth.

‘What a dump!’ said Carol.

She wasn’t wrong. 

Then, we saw all the people.  There were hundreds of them.  Girls and some boys too, just standing there, in the longest queue I had ever seen.  It went along the side of the building, round the corner and on for at least a hundred yards. On closer inspection I noticed how the young trendies were dressed. Never had I seen so many fashion mistakes in one place.  I pushed back my dyed blonde hair and eased up my skin-tight jeans.

‘Do you think they are all here for the croupier jobs?’  I wondered aloud.

‘Of course they are, you silly cow.  Let’s get in the bloody queue, shall we?’  Carol shoved me and we walked along the pavement, checking out the competition. 

‘They look younger than us.  And prettier,’  Carol whispered.

‘Speak for yourself!’  I said.

The advert had specified young, good-looking people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three.  I was twenty-four, Carol was all right, she was twenty-three. We were young enough and certainly attractive, in a brash kind of way.  Looking back, I blame Debbie Harry for my lack of sophistication.


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