On a blustery corner outside a pub, ludicrous to try writing in this wind but let’s. An atmosphere might find its way onto the page for once. It's flinging the top of my San Miguel into the street. The pub is called the Dolphin Inn, the dolphin on the sign looks a lot like a dragon, green skin and a red tongue and it’s flying. I think I detected some disappointment at the bar when I didn’t order the local lager, but I’ve had it before and it tastes like fire extinguisher, the cloudy powdery variety, and is not a refreshing experience. Giedra Radvilaviciute is with me, in book form, wind-bashed, and she’s fun. I’m reading it very slowly so it doesn’t run out, and in case there’s no or very little more of her in English.
I’m going to wake up at 6.15 tomorrow and think it’s time for work and spring out of bed and realise it isn’t and spring straight back in to bed.
Across the road there’s a building that calls itself a Meadery, but it isn’t open yet.
I’ve walked too far today and my feet feel like prime minister’s question time. All this wind is taking the edge off the sun, I don’t mind it. When I arrived last night there was rain congealed in the air and you had to cut through it eyebrow-first and the future seemed grim and familiar. The receptionist had an everything-will-be-fine voice and said tomorrow it might not rain.
I began to mind the wind. Now I'm in the Turks Head garden (no apostrophe), for historical reasons, and a seagull keeps offering to carry my bag home. There’s a sign up discouraging bad language. A man at one of the other tables just said chefs, don’t talk to me about chefs, and started talking about chefs. Mariah Carey’s getting involved. She doesn’t sound happy. Never has. A woman at another table just wants coleslaw for dinner. Come on, you have to have more than that, okay maybe some skin-on chips. They talk about dolphins while I read this in Giedra: I read that a woman in Israel married a dolphin. She kissed him, said I love you, and then dived into the water with her clothes on.
This abundance of dolphinry is encouraging and makes me believe I’m on holiday. I wonder if there’ll be a real one to look at, talk to or provide administrative support for, soon, and do they have tongues in real life or only when they’re on pub signage?
Coleslaw woman’s voice doesn’t match her appearance, somehow. Her husband or, who knows, accountant, was talking earlier about the fluctuating price of cherry tomatoes, and why having a regular veg box delivered to your house becomes uneconomical if you always throw away the swedes and turnips. She was listening to this and making one-syllable answers. Now she’s on about something in a sing-song tone that sounds as if it’s building up to a difficult truth, and it’s his turn with the one-syllable answers, but the wind is obscuring the details, except this: you don’t get a haircut before you go to the barber's, do you? And he’s made no response.
