The Value of Certain Property Versus Time

Back from a week’s holiday in the sun. Last week’s post covered that a bit. Some people seem to think I invented the German Lady with the Rubber Duck. I am here to tell you that I did not.

We went to Lanzarote. A place we’ve been to a couple of times before. We like it and ease of access is a key consideration in choosing to go back there. We can be in the airport in 30 minutes, The airport is small and easy to get through, the plane is generally timely, and we’re home again shortly after we land. The place is nice too. It suits us.

I didn’t say where I was in last week’s post. I’ve thought about the reasoning behind this decision and it’s mostly because I didn’t want you to know where I was. For many years I had one holiday a year and that was Christmas at home (my delight). Lately, I’ve tried to take one additional week, and, in that week, I find I crave a level of isolation and escape from the norm. Whatever book I am in the middle of reading, I don’t want to continue reading in that week. Whoever I have been talking to, I don’t want to continue talking to. Just me and the Lovely Patricia, on our own, in a different sort of a week. I needed it to be that kind of something different and it was.

In this week, I spent a little time contemplating the real estate around the swimming pool. What do we like to call them? I tend to call them ‘Li-lows’ but that doesn’t work in Google very well. I think a more correct phrase is ‘Sun Lounger’ though I’ve never said that before, to the best of my knowledge. Anyway, I reckon you know what I mean. I’m talking about the equipment around the pool that you lie on to catch the sun.

Lest you be in any doubt, can I say that they are the things that people put towels on in the early morning to claim their space for later when the sun come up more. Now you definitely know what I mean.

And, indeed, therein lies the rub, and I’m not referring to suntan lotion.

The poolside real estate of the sun lounger is a game that many people engage in during their holidays, and it is one I prefer to avoid if at all possible. I can be boringly territorial if I allow myself license to be that way, so I try very hard not to.

You know the game. People get up at silly o’clock to stumble out and get their towels on the best sun loungers, then they stumble back to bed, secure in the knowledge that their own little bit of poolside real estate is secured for the day. The sloths and unambitious fools who arrive after breakfast hoping for a poolside resting place can go and whistle Dixie for it. The towel is down and, in a more recent development of which I was not aware, it is clipped to the sun lounger with large multi-coloured clothes pegs which seem to add even more authority to the staked claim on the bed, even though the claim holder is still firmly abed scratching their arse.

If you sense a certain irritation at this practice, then you may not be completely wrong. The sight of two prime ‘Li-Lows’ broiling empty through an entire day while tamer mortals perch in the shadow of the lift shaft is something that could evoke feelings if I let it. But I try not to let it. This, after all, is my week away from the world and the petty politics of poolside real estate is something I am happier staying out of. I find a sun lounger somewhere, as I’m generally early anyway, and when I go somewhere I bring my towel with me and I find another one when I come back (though, generally the original one is still there). I avoid the messiness.

Though I do rather enjoy watching it sometimes. The immense English Lady with the Gold Lamé one-piece who arrives like a cloud and breast strokes in a highly passive-aggressive fashion up and down the pool, puffing and blowing, and glaring at the empty be-toweled loungers as if they were the vehicles through which her entire family has been kidnapped. A part of me asks myself what she expected, arriving down at 10.30am with her tepid hangover and her sun-drenched Jeffrey Archer. Another part of me feels her pain. I rather wish she would storm over, remove the circus clothes pegs and launch the offending towel into the centre of the pool before planting herself firmly on the reclaimed territory. But she doesn’t. She retires to a chair in the corner and complains to anyone who will listen to her.

The day passes. I don’t spend much time on the sun loungers by the pool. I tend to burn easily and it’s not a sensation I enjoy. I watch the ebb and flow of people from a safe distance, from behind my sunglasses, from under my sun-umbrella, and from around my book. I steer clear and am the happier for it.

By five o’clock in the afternoon, the pool is vacated.

This mystifies me a bit. For me it’s the very best part of the day. There is still plenty of warmth and sunshine all around, but a part of the sting has been removed from the solar rays. The pool is nice and roomy, and one can take the sun lounger of one’s choice as nobody else gives a toss about them.

It makes me think something but it’s not something I’ve managed to reach any great moral or logical  conclusion about. It’s just simply how something like the common ‘Li-Low’ can be so prized and fought over and contested in one hour and be completely unwanted and disregarded in the next.

It speaks to me of life and the things in our lives. The things that are so all-consuming and great and terrible and wonderful and scary and unavoidable and massive and… and… you know… big. Yet tomorrow, or next month or next year, they will all be as naught.

I walk among the sun loungers when everyone else has gone. I go up on the roof deck and look out over the town. People are on to the next thing, preparing for their holiday evening. Tomorrow, it will all kick off again.

I think…

A drink, perhaps.

Yes. Just a small one. Before dinner.