Still losing at Scrabble

I chose not to blip while we were in Cape Verde, hence this backblip from our final day there - the last in my short series of holiday snaps. Please check back to see the rest of the collection:

Wednesday 8th January: Raspberry panna cotta
Thursday 9th January: Cabana central
Friday 10th January: Cape Verde pool lizard 2025
Saturday 11th January: Open roof palm tree
Sunday 12th January: Beach shadow selfie
Monday 13th January: Swan towel romance
Tuesday 14th January: Tropical evening selfie

This is the second time that we have experienced a fly/flight and flop holiday in Cape Verde. We enjoyed it so much last year that we stayed in the same hotel (this time in room 3047, directly above 2047). Each day we followed a very similar routine to the one that we set in 2024.

Our mornings started with exercise. Apart from the last two days - when I had a minor foot/ankle injury - we began with a short run along the beach path to the town of Santa Maria and back. Then we checked into the gym for an hour. After showers, we reached the hotel restaurant for a big buffet breakfast at around 9:30am. Then it was time for the serious business of the day: lying on sunbeds in the shade of a cabana until late afternoon, with occasional breaks to take a dip in the pool or wander down to the beach. Our evenings comprised cocktails-Scrabble-supper. 

We weren’t entirely idle in our shady spot during the day: we read* a lot of the time, and chatted to one another on and off. Our funniest conversation of the holiday demonstrated the linguistic limitations of English when compared with other languages that offer two words for yes, such as ‘oui’ and ‘si’ in French. We had hoped to adopt our ‘ice cream for lunch’ habit on this holiday, but discovered on our first day that the ice cream display fridge at the pool bar was out of order. Each subsequent day I wandered over to check whether or not it had been repaired. When I returned to the cabana, I announced the outcome of my investigation to Mr hazelh. On one occasion Mr hazelh wasn’t paying any attention when I told him that there was still no ice cream. This led to the following exchange:

Mr hazelh: Did you say that there isn’t any ice cream?

hazelh: Yes.

Mr hazelh: Is that ‘Yes’ as in ‘Yes there is’ or ‘Yes there isn’t’?

hazelh: It’s ‘Yes’ as in ‘Yes we have no bananas’. 

We both thought it hilarious that ‘Yes we have no bananas’ was the most efficient way to communicate that the ice cream fridge was still out of order.

Another conversation of note was with a couple in the cabana to the left of us one day. After a few minutes of chat it became apparent that the couple came from Mr hazelh’s home town. Then we discovered that the husband and Mr hazelh went to the same school, he in the 1950/60s and Mr hazelh in the 1970/80s.

My blip for today shows the second last game of Scrabble of the series. This is one of the five that I lost over the course of the week. I only won one game. This was the sixth and final one that we played before we left the hotel for the airport and the first part of our journey home.

*In this order, I read:

Ladder of years by Anne Tyler
A possible life by Sebastian Faulks
The maiden by Kate Foster
The birdcage by Eve Chase
Anxious people by Fredrik Backman (my favourite of the pile)
(I gave up on Foucault's pendulum by Umberto Eco after a morning spent complaining that I did not enjoy being forced to look up obscure vocabulary and references every few sentences)
The perfect marriage by Jeneva Rose
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Exercise today: 1 hour on the exercise bike; small amount of walking (6882 steps).