Pull Buoys and beaches

Plans for the day include experimenting with new leg movements. I plan to take to the waves and swim with my new Pull Buoy. It took me an age to manage to buy a pull buoy because when I was told I needed one, and that it was a swim toy, I naturally assumed it was a 'pool boy'. Searching for 'Pool boys' took me in the wrong direction entirely. Anyway, I survived that and now have my yellow and blue 'Pull Buoy' and am told I must swim. NOT shaped like a shrimp with my back bent and belly reaching south, but FLAT like a plank, clenching this yellow and blue thing between my knees, with whats left of my shrivelled thigh muscles, and somehow get from one end of the pool to another, still flat, and still clenched. The point is not to kick my leg and risk damage to my precious new tendon. I mean ligament. While I am frantically paddling up and down, I will try not to worry about my daughter, who has emailed from Thailand this morning to complain that while she has spent about 2 months lounging around on a beach, because she thought it was THE BEACH, from the film so named, has now found out, just as she leaves to go 'tubing' (?) in Laos, that this was not where the film was made at all. What a waste of time. All that dedicated lolling on the 'most beautiful beach in the world' for nothing. I told her she should send her therapy bill to the local tourist authority.

Which leads me to wonder where I think the most beautiful beach in the world is. Having given it a moment's thought, I would go with either St Martins. Or Iona. Or actually maybe Calgary Bay. All of these in sunshine preferably.

Plans for the day re the cottages? Well, have already delivered the newly laundered little hooded towels to the children in the cottage. Makes me feel surprisingly happy to know these little winnie the poo and minnie mouse towels, so loved by my own children on beaches gone by, (beaches again..) are now in use and being enjoyed by Max and Tavia. A happy find in my slightly groaning towel cupboard.

Also, I must email the lovely Portuguese carpenter about fixing the hole that another child has mined in Piper Lodge wall. Not sure the next guests will think much of it.

Otherwise, things are looking up. The sun is shining, the sweet rocket is going ballistic along the front of the property. I saw at least another 10 cornflowers in the meadow yesterday...

Better get off with my Pull Buoy then.