2 January - Alone or?

When travelling with people one should invent some rituals for oneself so as to carve out time and space for themselves... I'm loving being with my hosts, their siblings, my siblings, other friends from London but I sort of like to abandon the 4 novels I bring to read and would even like to get started on some of the ones Toph brought (we never manage to consolidate our books) and it's going to be difficult at this rate of... interruptions, managing rendez vous and generally spending time to compromise on times we all leave house or meet to meet or to have coffee or a drink etc.

My suggestion to myself but feel free to adopt it, is to declare that (a' la Gwyneth or Madonna or the likes) every day at 12 till 2pm you like to go for a long, SILENT, wak to meditate, or that you must nap ALONe away from all. Nobody can question your ritual because it's part of you as much as not eating meat for example. This way you'd have your sanctuary and if nobody spies on you then they won't find out that you've actually gone wandering the shops in downtown Playa or are under a palm tree elsewhere, reading your book. If they find you out, then come clean and say that unfortunately nobody's rhythms and timetable match and trying to keep up with others requires too much self-censure (for when you're about to explode and say 'I like my beach at 8 till 11 and then 2 till 6. Whaddayamean we're arriving for the third day running at 10.45 when the sun is buning and you have to have the brain of a raisin to want to lay your towel down now?'

Talking of raisins, yes, I'd say they exist, and most men are in this category. I never tire of showing friends my hands/face which seem to tan even with repeated application of factor 50, as proof that the sun will get you no matter what. The poor souls think that using factor 25 or 30 is already a great improvement on the old days of factor 4 or ... nothing but if I had a quid for every time a man slathers on cream upon arrival on beach (wrong, had to be done earlier) and then immediately goes for a swim... I'd be rich. They say things like 'but it says here it's waterproof' and I say 'believe that and believe anything'.

So you can see that going for my 2 hour ALONE time would probably be very welcome by my holiday associates too who'd get a break from my sun nannying interference. When it comes to the sun's bad action on their skin, I cannot obviously say that it's not enough for me to avoid lines on my face or general skin ageing if my nearest and dearest then let the side down by looking old when stood next to me. Yes, my body fascism now has a new facet ie. I don't want my friends to make me look old if they look old, if you see what I mean.

It's bad enough that we collectively act old already as in 'Let's get away from the section of beach with the dj's and blaring music'. Mmmhh... Well, not the entire day there surely, but I can take a few hours? I can read whilst listening to blaring music much easier than when I get interrupted with 'Hey did you know that there are more grains of sand in a glass of water than there are in all the beaches in all the world?' I say 'Even if I cared to ask you where you read it, how did they work it out and why do you believe it and why does anybody care for this piece of information, I'd rather get to the end of thsi chapter of this excellent book by Colm Toibin based on the life of Henry James. Would you like me to tell you the plot and which novels of HJ the various biographical details refer to? Oh, thought not! Leave me alone!'.