Day 222. Small blue thing. (10/8/13)

We were on holiday. In Rhodes. Or 'on' Rhodes, one of the two. The days around this talk about me writing a piece on Luis Suarez for a website from the shade of a hotel pool bar, of Matty getting sunstroke for a couple of days.

They're greta for me to read, they're a diary. The world doesn't need my 2013 diary.

This one though, this one is notable because I managed to turn a few paragraphs into a 15 minute monologue.

I went for a walk a couple of hours ago.

(Grammatically speaking, should that actually be 'a couple of hours ago I went for a walk'? I can never remember which is correct. Or I never can remember.... It does get awfully confusing)

Anyway. We decided fairly early in the holiday that we were unlikely to stray from the pool. The problem with having visited Rhodes four times now is that we've seen what we feel we need to see. When we visited it two years ago, Rhodes town itself seemed to have lost a great deal of the allure that we found on our first holiday here the best part of two decades ago. It seemed brighter, more commercial, a little cheaper; it just wasn't the same.

There was always Lindos though, Lindos never tires; small white houses tumbling down the hillside like scattered sugar cubes in the shadow of the Acropolis overlooking the bay where St Peter first set foot in Europe. But we did Lindos last time as well, 24 Euros per person for a boat ride in order to spend 3 hours there to walk up to and back down from an Acropolis that probably hasn't changed a great deal in the last two years? 100 Euros for a day out that we've already done just so we've done something?

But sometimes you need to wander.

So I headed for the beach. I like beaches in theory. In practice? The sand's a bit of a nuisance but I love the sea. J however? Not so hot on large bodies of water.

So I was on my own. Hat, sunglasses, flip flops in a pile on the shore I waded out in an almost Reggie Perrin-esque manner. Just a little too far, just beyond where I was able to stand and I floated.

I floated in perfect, warm, clear water and I faced the Mediterranean. At least I think it's the Med, my geography is appalling, it could be anything. The point is; all I had in front if me was a vast expanse of water. Behind me the hills that formed the bay, before me water and the rest of the world.

There were voices drifting from the beach, none of them English. There were a handful of boats pulling parascending tourists in the distance and a windsurfer crossing my path from time to time. Closer to me was a small white boat; a man in black shirt and white hat demonstrating some action to an old couple head to toe in white.

All these individual slices of life, all carrying on with no knowledge of the others. I've no idea who any of these people are, no idea what their life is like and I love that fact.

Floating. One small dot in a magnificent expanse of blue. Totally at ease. Totally relaxed. Very small in a huge fantastic world.