A right to have fun

August 11, 2003

lobster disaster

hey back in the office. It feels like weeks since I've been here. I was really dreading it, a really squishy feeling in my stomach, but so far the only three people I've seen have all been really nice people and so it's okay. Now just another 6 hours or so to go!!

Went to the sea yesterday. Well, not right to it, as in to touch it, but close enough to feel its breezes and to look at it. It is soooooooo hot (boring I know) but it is hotter than Cairo, or Algiers or Athens or or or...

I thought I was going to die glued to my chair in the restaurant yesterday lunchtime, it was so hot. but then the funniest thing happened, this poor woman next to me reached for some lobster off a big stand on her table and the whole thing collapsed in her lap - she was swamped with fishy iced water, seaweed, lobster, crab, mayonnaise - it was the most atrocious mess I have ever seen. So that was bad enough, she was upset and disgusted that her lovely dress was both ruined and see-through but then to make it even worse, through it all her husband just carried on eating, barely looked up with a grunt, went back to dissecting his crab while she had to go off and clean up, leaving her side of the table soaked in water and smeared with mayonnaise and assorted shellfish. Poor thing. It was like she was some demented old lady he was trying to ignore. He could at least have laughed!!

Ooh and then just when we couldn't take the heat any more (air conditioning? what's that?) we found a really ice-cold spring near the town and plunged our feet into it and cooled off and it made the long long drive home that much more bearable.