Lounging about

Sunday 7th October

Lots of things contrived to make a disturbed night for us both – late new arrivals the night before were still clattering around in the early hours in their excitement, too much itching from the bites left by the bugs that always seem to take much more of a liking to Debrah than to me, too much noise from me and my snoring (perhaps it frightens the bugs).

At the risk of sounding monotonous, it was a glorious sunrise. This morning, though, I wasn’t the only one watching – several of the new arrivals were up to see their first – the girl in the next room along a little surprised to see me there as she wandered out onto the terrace to take a photo dressed only in a t-shirt.

One week on from our first morning here and it was a bit strange to be the ones who know where everything is and how it works and where to sit and what’s available for breakfast – it felt a bit like being at college – an old hand welcoming the freshers on their first day.

Down at the beach it was a bit breezier than it has been. Ideal for yachting in fact and this being Sunday there were far more yachts than usual out on the water and far more than usual under full sail rather than motoring along and there is no scene more splendid to look at than a beautiful blue sea filled with white sails all moving in different directions because it is a constantly changing one that can keep you enthralled for hours.

I finished my second book of the holiday – if finishing an unfinished book can count as finishing – I can never finish it because ‘Suite Francaise’ by Irene Nemirovsky was never finished by the author who was shipped off to a concentration camp by the Nazis and, sadly, died there. Everyone I know has read this book and praised it to high heaven whereas I just felt extremely frustrated when I got to the end not knowing, and never ever being able to know, what happens to all the characters and their lives.

At least we don’t miss the bus after lunch today and spend the afternoon as before in a mixture of sleeping, reading, swimming and a bit of work on the computer – today I had to re-send all the photos to i-escape for our Carcassonne apartments web page and send some information to the bookkeeper of my London job.

We had an impromptu pre-dinner on the terrace outside our room consisting of some rather piquant stuffed olives and some very sweet and tasty gherkins washed down by the final glass of red from the bottle we opened last night.

We were both hungry and looking forward to dinner, especially the lamb shanks on today’s menu, but because we don’t follow the herd at 8.00pm on the dot and tend to meander in for dinner a bit later, even though we are hungry, we suffer the consequences – meaning that everyone else had ordered the lamb shanks and there were none left – bugger. I have to say though, that the chargrilled spatchcocked chicken and mash that I had instead was delicious.

From hunger to dinner to tiredness seemed to happen very quickly and so, with an unfinished bottle of wine (!) we headed to bed.

It’s funny how the second week of a holiday always seems to go much faster than the first – today just seemed to disappear in a blur.