Beached

Jesse is returned, so after my classes this morning, my youngest feminine gender and sons 2&3 packed a picnic and we headed east in search of sun, sand and sea. We had arranged to meet up with Emma's university flat mate, Mariona, who is Catalan, her boy friend Bruno from Corsica and as it turned out M's parents, a lovely couple who had brought along not a picnic but more of a banquic, bread, olives, pates, hams, cheese. Made my tuna mayonaisse rolls look a little pathetic by comparison.

It was one of those baking days where to move across the sand was like experiencing American hospitality in Guantanamo Bay, the soles of the tooties toasted on the hot sands. The beach was at its best, I like July, the August holiday crowds are still not around and there are yummie mummies with kids, it is very civilised, not at all like Britain where at least three dogs will divest themselves of water a yard away from you, a naked two year old is liable to pee on your towel and the ubiquitous tatooed louts with lobster tans and footballs terrorise the scene.

In Catalonia the maximum annoyance usually comes from the Granny and Granddad who feel lonely and on an otherwise deserted strand will park themselves a metre away.
The usual ritual is then we rearrange towels a little further along the beach, settle down again and inevitably, crab like, the old yins creep towards us on their magic carpets of Barça towels and soon are once more integrated into our domain.

I tried to take photos from beneath the sunshade, inexplicably either bikini clad bottoms kept insinuating themselves between me and the subject, or statuesque dutch matrons in topless perambulation from the beach bar wobbled themselves into the picture.

Then the looky looky men appeared, Africans selling blankets as the temperature soared towards 42 degrees, or cheap bracelets or plastic sunglasses. They brought back memories of a beach in Sardinia, near a resort favoured by Glaswegians, who had taught the pedlars snatches of obscene patois, so you were not offered a mere rug but a f.... rug or a bl..... bracelet or sh...... sunglasses.

The boys and Emma bravely ventured out to sea in a pedal. I bravely volunteered to watch our belongings in case a model mummy from Barcelona decided to make off with my disreputable shorts or the cool bag of beer. I resolutely stood guard by falling fast asleep over my Henning Mankell, and woke to the feeling of deep heat being poured into an open wound as my pink tender bits began to pulsate to the rhythm of a supermarket theft alarm.

As the sun dipped towards the headland of St Pere Pescador, I finally took a shot not filled with female anatomy, and caught the graceful swirl of the kites of the surfers as they sped across the sea. Looks fun, must try it when the throbbing of burnt flesh eases.