My *thing* is walking…usually across the wild and woolly moors. Today the beach, where I encounter the Towel Draper and the Scavenger.

Bearing in mind I was walking at dawn, imagine my surprise when a tense and harried looking man squeezed past me as I was exiting the hotel’s secure grounds to access the beach, where the hotel also has a number  – make that a couple of hundred or so – sun beds lined up in neat and very close together rows. (I’m freaking out at the thought of reclining on one for even part of a day even as I write that)  My first response was concern, thinking he must be hurrying to attend a relative or friend who had had an accident, so I kept an eye on things in case he needed help. But no. Glancing over his shoulder in the dim light of dawn, he quickly laid out his towels on what must be his favoured position on the edge of this sardine arrangement.

Now, forgive me if I sound slightly perjoritive here – but wtf??? First off, why make the focus of the day laying out in the sun courting skin cancer? And secondly, does the position of a sun bed matter so much that you have to forget you’re on holiday and rise before dawn to dash down to the beach to bag one?  I must be missing something here.

Then there was the guy with the metal detector going round the empty sun beds. I’d like to think that if he had found someone’s precious engagement ring etc, he would return it to the authorities.

Oh, and there was a thirdly – when I returned from the beach after around an hour, the Second Battalion Towel Drapers was frantically exercising its right to drape.

Do give over. It can’t be good for your health.

Love to all my fabulous and highly sensible readers, whom I know without asking would be too busy searching out shade to read a book! You are, without question, the absolute best.

Susan xx