Poolside, swimwear and stuff!

Timing is everything. I went down to the pool late morning today. Some people like to stay in the pool for two minutes and then get out and sunbathe. I prefer to swim a good distance. Swimming is good exercise - un ejercicio completo, as a Spanish friend said to me once. But swimming a good distance in our small pool involves doing circuits, which is easiest if you have the pool more or less to yourself.

And my timing was good because I had practically completed the number of circuits I had set myself before the swimming lessons -usually daddies with small children - and the watch-me-jump-in teenagers arrived. And suddenly there were plenty of both categories

Yesterday I had the place almost entirely to myself but then yesterday was mostly cloudy, albeit thin cloud with intervals of sunshine. I find the locals don’t use the pool much in such weather. Of course, they might all have gone to the beach.

Today, in contrast, was clear and sunny, forecast to remain so all day. And tomorrow as well. So lots more pool users. No barbecuers though. Maybe it has not been consistently sunny enough to promote barbecues!

My younger sister, the one I usually refer to as my Spanish sister, has been spending a few days with our older sister, my English sister, since we came back to Galicia. Just as she did at my house, she has been hunting for old photos of our childhood at my English sister’s house. Today she messaged me a photo of me, herself and our brother standing on Southport beach, probably circa 1960, three quite scrawny kids on the sand with the sea remarkably close for Southport. Which might mean it was Ainsdale beach rather than Southport proper. My sister and I are wearing those odd elasticated swimsuits that girls wore back then.

No mini-bikinis that you see even on tiny girls these days. And certainly no suntanned buttocks on show! There were a number of those down at the pool this morning, not all of them terribly shapely either! I find it a strangely unflattering fashion in swimwear, a kind of thong affair exposing as much bottom to the sun’s rays as possible.

Once again I seem to growing grumpily intolerant!

Sitting in a bar yesterday evening, we heard a familiar theme tune from the television and realised it was Montalbano, the Italian detective series. When it is transmitted in the UK it is in Italian with English subtitles but it is rare for films and series to be transmitted in their original language here in Spain. Montalbano sounds all wrong in Spanish, and yet the voices sounded vaguely familiar, probably dubbed by the same team of actors who dub everything.

I read about people paying to socialise with Prime Minister Theresa May. Eighty-one Conservative Party donors, including Jacob Rees-Mogg’s business partner and the wife of a former senior minister to Vladimir Putin, have paid more than £7million, not individually I hope, for the privilege over the last year.

What an odd thing to do! I hope they were well fed or were served the best cocktails and wines. I suppose they could then dine out on the stories for years to come but personally I would pay not to have to be in the same room as that rather stiff lady.

 Chacun à son gout!