Sunday 4th May, and then we were four.

Sunday 4th May 2008

I hadn’t bothered to set an alarm. For several days a real fatigue had been setting in and it had got to the point that by the time we’d eaten and messed about for an hour in the evening, all I wanted to do was go to bed. I know this has been getting on Russ’ nerves. He wants to party until the early hours every night. For this reason I’d managed to stay up until about one and we’d had a pleasant evening doing very little because there was nothing much to do. We went down to the nightclub when it opened at midnight but we were the only ones down there, it seemed that the rest of Letoonialand had given up on any idea of some decent evening entertainment and had all taken to their beds early. We had a final drink at our usual places at the bar. It was Annie and Bruce’s last full night and they left today.

We didn’t get out of bed until eleven. I woke up and read my book in bed until Russ decided to join the land of the living. We had sex, showered and made for our beds by the pool, lazy or what? By the time we got out we only had an hour and a half to wait until lunch but Russ was staaaarving, he went in search of food while I got stuck into my book that I was finding hard to put down. I only had a few pages left and wanted to find out how it would end.

After a few minutes I was distracted by the increasingly loud chant of “Mee nee goof… mee nee goof…mee nee goof.” I lowered my book to watch the morning procession pass by. One of the animation girls was at the head with another bringing up the rear, sandwiched between them were about ten children in the three to six year group. They were marching along clapping their hands in time to the chanting and for the most part looking bemused, if not downright confused and scared. The animation team march the kids backwards and forwards between activities always clapping and chanting what they are going to do next. What amused the hell out of me was that the children would chant exactly what they heard, not having a clue what they were saying but doing it anyway. I could imagine these kids three months on, with their mock Turkish accents. Another favourite of mine after the ‘mini golf’ was ‘ooh raaaange kesh’ (orange squash.) I can just hear the kids telling their teacher that on holiday they played mee nee goof.

We had to make sure today that we’d taken everything that we might need from our room. Annie and Bruce had to check out by twelve and they don’t fly until six o’clock tomorrow morning. They leave the hotel at half two which makes it a hell of a long day for them. I said that we’d give them our room from twelve until six so that they could get some kip. I don’t think Russ was very keen on the idea but I’d hope that in the same circumstances somebody else might do the same for us. Russ isn’t by any means thoughtless and would do anything that he could to help somebody. It’s just that he’s a lot more sensible than me. As he said, we don’t really know these people from Adam and although our money and documents were all locked in our safe, we had personal things in our room. I told him in reply maids are in and out, the lad who stocks the mini bar comes in when we aren’t there, sometimes you just have to have a little trust in people.

As it was they never took us up on our offer, vanity got the better of Annie and she wanted to grab every last second in the sun to have a tip top tan to show off back home … and who can blame her.

We had a gorgeous lunch and ate on the terrace in the sun. Russ couldn’t understand when there were fifty different dishes to choose from would I want to have a plate of salad. I love salad and with a piece of hot fresh bread and one of the nice dressings there’s nothing better. I did eat a lot of salad but I had a different choice every day.

Russ made me feel so much better. We were eating lunch and I had my familiar twinge of guilt. I commented that Marty would have loved all of this.

“He’d hate it,” said Russ without hesitation.

What, all this amazing food? He’d live on pizza and barbecue for a week and be in heaven.”

“Oh yes, he would love the food, but that’s all he’d like. He’d be bored stupid here. There are very few people his age and those that are are Russian. He really would hate it.”

That made me feel so good. All week I’d been beating myself up about leaving Marty at home and when I took stock and thought about it, if he had come with us the lad would have lived from one meal to the next. He’d hate the heat because both of my sons are fair and neither of them cope with the sun well. He’d have had nothing to do, nowhere to go and the nightlife would have bored him to tears.

Mid afternoon we went to the relaxation centre. I had a swim and then went to the Turkish bath room. My sunburn was gradually turning brown but parts of it were still very tender and I couldn’t face the thought of the sting from the sauna. It was very different from the first time I went in and did my yoga sitting on the big tiled slab. Today it was busy and a lady was having a treatment and lay face down on the slab while the attendant lay frothy towels full of soap on her body, the area around her was filled with soap bubbles. Another two ladies sat on the slab waiting for their turn. You have to sit in the steam for ten minutes before your treatment to open all of your pores.

Because it’s a very moist and gentle steam women sat around the edges with their children. One lady in particular fascinated me. She was incredibly beautiful with very dark skin and long black hair and almond eyes. She had a naked little boy of about five sitting on her knee and she cooled him with the water from the gourd in he wall. She instantly put me in mind of a Turkish Madonna. It wouldn’t have been difficult to persuade yourself that you could see the lady’s aura, and if indeed you could it would be yellow with the faintest vein of rose and lilac. She was the epitome of serenity and calm. I had in mind that she was actually employed to sit there and sing. If not she should have been because she changed the entire atmosphere in the Turkish bath. Again I had the sense of going back hundreds of years in time. With the steam and the lady singing, it was like being in a Grecian temple. She didn’t so much sing as wail and she wasn’t in the least self conscious. When she caught my eye she gave Russ and I a warm smile but didn’t pause in the beautiful noise she was making. It was wailing, there were no words only sounds, she had a high pure voice and I suppose the closest thing I could liken it to would be a lament, but this wasn’t in the least bit sorrowful. There was nothing sad about it. If peace was a sound that’s what she was making. Writing about it now my eyes have just filled with water, it was such a gentle sweet experience. Russ and I stayed in there for about half an hour. We held hands and rested against the hot tiles with our eyes closed. I thought he was listening to the singing too but it’s the strangest thing. When we talked about it later and I said how beautiful the lady’s voice was Russ said, “What lady?”

I described her and told him about the wailing song. The lady was striking. The room was quiet. It was a place that people went to sit quietly. People could talk if they wanted to but mostly they just sit and relax. How then could Russ not have heard this beautiful music? It was only when Russ and I talked about it that I realised that although she was in the middle of a lot of people on the tiled seating, nobody actually spoke to her or acknowledged her in any way. I never saw anybody else look at her.

So there’s no point in trying to hide what passed through my mind. Now I’m not saying that I saw and heard a ghost in that room, two in fact with the child that would be stupid and fanciful. The complex is only ten years old and has no history as such. But... the lady wasn’t quiet, you would clearly be able to hear her voice from one side of the room to the other and Russ was sitting right next to me. He didn’t see her and he didn’t hear her. I had assumed that she was somebody hired to create the perfect ambiance, she did seem out of place there. Who knows maybe I was lucky enough to be treated to a very special experience that not everybody was privy to. Maybe I fell asleep and dreamed the lady or perhaps Russ was especially unobservant and just switched off to the sound because he didn’t want to hear, much as I don’t notice the cricket song at home but to others it’s deafening. I do know that every time I went into that room and indeed the entire centre I came out feeling wonderful.

Unfortunately it wasn’t a feeling that was to last for long. I was so very grateful that Annie and Bruce had decided not to sleep in the afternoon. We were just waiting for the five o’clock ritual of tea and cakes. The sun was wonderful and I’d finished my novel. I’d really enjoyed it and was a couple of chapters into my second book. This one was a medical examiner, crime, Patricia Cornwell type story, though she didn’t write it. I am hopeless with titles and authors. I felt the first twinge of tummy ache while I read and five minutes later I was sweating, trembling, my skin was clammy and my stomach was in agony. I told Russ that I was going to go to our room to lie down for a little while and asked that if I could have a bit of time to myself. I don’t know what I’d have done if our room hadn’t been available.

I striped naked and got under the covers. Despite being ninety degrees I couldn’t get warm. After five minutes I had to run to the toilet. I had terrible tummy ache and was grateful of the privacy. I was still sitting on the toilet after losing litres of fluid when my mouth filed with water and although I didn’t feel particularly sick I felt as though I was going to vomit. This was awful. There was no way I could get up from the toilet and about face. I turned on the tap and hung my head over the sink. Two minutes earlier I hadn’t felt sick at all but now as I tried to fight the rising nausea I felt awful. I didn’t vomit. I have no idea how I managed not to but when it comes to being sick I do have an iron will. After half an hour I managed to get a hot shower and crawl into bed. I fell asleep immediately and woke to Russ shaking me when he came to get ready for dinner at half six.

“Oh Russ,” I whined as I opened my eyes. “I feel awful.” Then I thought, hang on a minute, no I don’t, I feel fine. I didn’t want to risk being too far away from the privacy of our room tonight and was glad that we weren’t going on a trip or anything but right at that moment I felt okay again. I don’t think it was Turkey tummy that laid me out this afternoon; I think it was a bit of sunstroke. I couldn’t care less about a tan, in fact the worry and concern of skin cancer has put a bit of a dampener on getting one, but I do love the sun. After a cold and hard winter I was so greedy for it. I wasn’t bothered about sunbathing as long as I could be out there and feel it on my skin. I reckon that I’d just overdone it and had taken on a few too many rays and that’s what had laid me low and made me so damned tired for the past few days.

I was dubious about having anything to eat and decided to just have a drink of boiled water at dinnertime but one smell of the gorgeous food from the barbecue wafting over the terraces and my stomach had other ideas. I was so glad that it hadn’t happened tomorrow because we’d booked in at a posh restaurant to celebrate our birthday and wanted it to be special. As it happened I needn’t have worried. I had a piece of barbecued chicken marinated in rosemary and lime and of course I had to have my spoonful of buttered rice with tzaziki topping. It was beautiful. For dessert I had a tiny piece of one of the chocolate gateaux on offer that night and spooned some mandarin mousse, mandarin segments and double cream over the top, so much for pandering to my dickie stomach and if I paid for it later then it would have been worth it. I was fine.

The show that evening was ‘Rock ‘n’ Rolla’ to be honest it was by far the best one that the animation team put on. They did some jiving and jitterbugging and chucked in a couple of very corny comedy sketches. The costumes were bright and the choreography and skill was far better than I’d seen earlier in the week.

Despite it being the same old routine that night I did enjoy the evening. It was the first time all six Brits had been together. Judy, Pierce, Annie Bruce, Russ and myself all gathered around our table and spent the honeymooners last evening with them. The vodka flowed even in my direction. I behaved like a lady and didn’t do anything too embarrassing and we stayed with Annie and Bruce right until the bitter end.

I did have one embarrassing moment. Half way through the evening I had a startling revelation. I mentioned at the beginning of the week that the tower and focal feature of the bar is six enormous clock faces. Well it had annoyed me all week that they never kept the correct time. As I gazed around to switch off from Annie’s drone, I suddenly noticed in great big letters underneath one of the clocks the word ‘Moscow’. I looked at another one and saw, ‘London’ the next said ‘Berlin’ like a light bulb coming on, the penny dropped. I felt like Archimedes.
“Hey,” I said in delight, “I’ve just worked out why all the clocks tell a different time. They are set to different time zones.”

A groan went up around the table. “Oh have you just realised that?” said Bruce.

Well I never claimed to be very bright.

Annie had a tale to tell. Apparently she’s been discovered by a scout for a top modelling agency, though she didn’t know which one because she didn’t think to ask! Her story goes that she and Bruce were walking by one of the pools when a man jumped out of some bushes and started taking pictures of her.

“Sounds like some kind of perv to me,” said Judy sagely. Annie glared at her.

“No, no he was a professional photographer, he said so.” Annie went on to tell us that he had her lying on her side posing provocatively and draping herself around statues, languishing in a hammock and pouting by the pool. “He’s going to be in touch,” was her closing statement.

Bruce said nothing.

For all of their tall tales I was quite sorry to see them leave. And then we were four.