I was just lying there, minding my own business, like I do every morning when I am on holiday in a hot country. Lying there, comfortably positioned on one of those blue plastic sun loungers that are popular at Spanish resorts, a couple of heavily breasted, bronze tanned girls walked along the beach in front of my friend Richard and I, lazily kicking at the hot sand with each step. A white line was just visible as the briefest of bikini’s stretched hard to maintain their modesty.
It’s at times like these that I wish that I was still eighteen years old. My mind still thinks it is eighteen but gets reminded when it tries anything more than gentle respiration, that it’s, well, aged a bit.
So I carried on reading my two day old newspaper, the one that I had brought with me from England, the one that had been read whilst I had an in-flight nap, by almost all of the passengers on the aeroplane except me, the one that had been x-rayed for any hidden devices at Gatwick Airport during check in. Now that strikes me as a little bit odd, surely if you have a hand gun, and let’s face it you could hardly conceal an eight barrelled, 6000 round a minute minigun in a rolled up newspaper, it would be obvious. With my luck I would probably put it on the floor whilst I used the toilet, then as I reached for the tissue I would inadvertently kick the damn thing causing it to discharge and shoot some poor guy in the buttocks as he pulled up his trousers and thus ruining his holiday. Try explaining that to your holiday insurance company.
As the girls got closer and my hormonal glands stuttered into life, I could see that they were very amused by something as they looked our way. My friend Richard, who has never been on a holiday, let alone out of England, was asleep on his lounger next to me. Well, to be honest, at that point I didn’t know if he was sleeping, or if he was comatose.
Let me tell you about Richard. Whilst studying law at university he became involved in The Campaign for National Disarmament, the CND. At the height of the cold war there were a lot of demonstrations about national disarmament and one in particular involved the Police after it turned into a near riot. Well, my friend Richard spent three weeks at Her Majesty’s leisure after giving a Policeman a good kicking during this furore, which if you are a British motorist, I am sure you will agree, they all need.
Richard has since become a bit of a radical left winger and makes no bones about making sure everyone knows. He finished his education with an honors degree in law, but was unable to train as a solicitor in consequence of his action and subsequent attitude toward Her Majesty’s Police Force. He is more settled these days with two teenage sons and a wife who’s faced was used by God as a model for a monkey’s bum.
Richard had brought with him only a jet black jogging suit and a pair of fluorescent green running shoes to wear during our 7 day vacation, and now he was lying face up motionless on his lounger. I had wondered if his body temperature had risen to such a point where his body had stared to slowly cook inside this black cotton oven, but I couldn’t hear any sizzling, so I figured he was just asleep.
As the girls passed by the foot of our loungers, they were giggling loudly and started to speed up their step. It was not until now that I noticed that the area of beach around us was inhabited mostly by topless young ladies of various nationalities, all looking furtively at Richard. I pretended not to notice and continued reading my newspaper, although by now it was getting tedious, since I had already read everything twice. Again I glanced, out of the corner of my eye, at all these lovely young women congregating around our area of beach. I noticed one in particular who had positioned herself on her left side and so facing Richard and I. God, her breasts looked so big that I sure she could have swum from Dover to Calais underwater on one breath!
My curiosity could stand it no longer, I had to know what everyone was looking at. I eased myself onto my right side, facing Richard, and the girl with mammary atrophy. I still had my newspaper in front of me, by now so well read that I could have recited it word for word backwards. Glancing around the edges of the newspaper, I began to look for any obvious signs of interest or amusement. After about 10 minutes of doing this, my eye muscles hurt so much that I wondered if I would have focused vision ever again.
At this point I had decided that the sight of Richard dressed in a black running suit lying beside another mad tourist (me) dressed in white shorts and shirt, exposing skin the colour of a frozen turkey was causing mild amusement amongst the local yokels, so I turned onto my back, folded up my long suffering newspaper and placed it, without looking, on the sand at the side of my lounger. I resigned myself to soaking up some sun, getting tanned and becoming less noticeable in this ocean of bronzed bodies, and with that I put on my sunglasses and lay back.
My mind stared drifting, like it does when you are relaxed and comfortable, back to my homeland of England, the rain, the price of petrol, what my friends and colleagues might be doing right now. Here I was soaking up the sun on the Costa Blanca, warm sand, beautiful women, the Mediterranean lapping at my feet, looking forward to seven days of relaxation, good food, good wine and a decent tan by the end of it.
“Senor, Senor,” I opened my eyes against the glaring sun and could see two large black figures standing at my feet, “Whaaat!”, I exclaimed instinctively, raising my hand to shield my eyes. After a few seconds I focused onto two members of the local Policia glaring at me and the one with the biggest gun, GUN, oh my God!!, was pointing at Richard.
“Pour va vour,” now nodding toward Richard, everyone on the beach was standing looking toward us. Slowly I turned my head toward Richard. My eyes, now sharply focused, remained on the gun. My heart was pounding, I could feel my bowels tightening, I was sweating profusely. When my eyes would let my head turn no further, I stopped. Looking at the Policeman’s face for any sign that I might soon be bleeding, my eyes snapped onto Richard.
Oblivious to the trauma I was undergoing, he was still asleep and for the past hour or so had maintained an erect penis that had fought for it’s freedom and was sticking out well above his elasticated waistband and attracting more than flies. Nonchalantly, I picked up my newspaper, opened it and slid it over his waist covering him and returning him some dignity.
All the time my mind was racing. What happens if he wakes up and in a half conscious state seeing two Policeman standing over him, thinks he is still back at Aldermaston, and goes for it? Three months in a sweaty Spanish jail with nothing to eat but cockroaches and nothing to drink but your own urine. Still, better than being shot up the arse in a toilet.
