Last night was bad. Last night was the row that I was expecting, him asking for reasons, poking and probing and opening up wounds. Horrible, horrible.
This morning all is calm again. After breakfast we take the 30-minute trek along the beach to the medina. It’s cooler, but the sea is still a pleasing shade of turquoise, the sand is gratifyingly white. We have money left and we intend to brave the hassle of the shopkeepers, and spend it. We fail, twice, to haggle for a leather bag, before finding a better one in a prix fixé shop. Then I haggle in french for a scarf for Páfrány – her névnap is soon. We walk all the way to the top of the old town, where a cafe with a terrace advertises its “seeview;” then back down the white cobbled streets to the jumbled shops and the hard sell. I don’t enjoy the pressure, but perversely, they are less pushy if you enter the shops voluntarily. One man grabs my elbow and tries to pull me into his shop, though, and I find that alarming, and quite painful.
We return to the beach, my shoulders now respectably covered in a Med-coloured shawl, protecting me from the nasty sun. Being sunburnt, like being too drunk, I find unpleasant and unneccesary. I’ve grown to be a fan of moderation, I must be getting old.
Last night at last, how slow this week has been. What a strange sort of a holiday.