Day 175 - Christmas Eve

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Christmas Eve and more importantly, to us at least, our half-year wedding anniversary. Taking to his new husband role, Ed had to pop out for some last minute Christmas shopping. Once the chores were out of the way we hit the beach with a borrowed umbrella, mat and beach towels and Stuart’s new purchases of a football and Frisbee. Not much point scribing a day at the beach in our blog but obviously it was excellent - 22C water temperature, Kinkladze-like football skills and no visible sharks. There is a new initiative here where previously unemployed people are put to work on the beach as ‘shark-spotters’. They put up flags along the lines of Green (high visibility and no sharks spotted), Blue (low visibility and no sharks spotted), Red (a shark was spotted within the past 2 hours but it seems to have gone now) and White with a Black silhouette of a shark (shark in the water - GET OUT NOW!). We suggest another flag colour, perhaps yellow, to signify ‘shark-spotters playing football with the car park’s security guard’.

For the eve part of Christmas Eve our guesthouse’s owners Gillian and Glynn had invited us to their drinks party. Once the preliminary and short-lived politeness stage (ie not eating) was out of the way we had an excellent time chatting with assorted friends and family. Towards the end someone noticed that none of the 30-odd crackers that had been laid out had been opened, and gave permission to the only child at the party to pull them. This he set about enthusiastically and walked off with bulging pockets of plastic toys.

Shamefully the 6 of us were the first to leave because we wanted our beds. We’re not doing much to enhance the worldwide party-loving reputation of the English.

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