BULGARIAN BEACH BABIES

Cacao Beach, Nessebar, Bulgaria

Night Beach Babies

Huge party scene at Cacao Beach - not for Big Mamas

Nothing can make me as exhausted as lying on the beach the entire day! Reading or dozing on a comfy sun lounger, dragging myself into the sea every now and then to cool off, putting on sun lotion, deciding what to have for lunch (such a difficult decision!), having an hour's massage. When the day at the beach is over, all I want to do is go home and sleep.

But I love it! I'm one of those people who can never get enough heat, sun and sand. And this is the kind of exhaustion I can easily deal with, any day. I'm not as set on a suntan as I used to be when I was younger - with all the ensuing dangers - so you'll usually find me under a sun umbrella these days. And I can't possibly be a Beach Baby for more than four hours max - as opposed to eight to nine hours in an earlier life. To put it another way - I've become a Beach Big Mama.

Sunny Beach

Real Beach Babies

My granddaughters love the beach of course. As long as there's water nearby they're happy. A couple of years ago Mira was still little enough to bring her sand toys to the beach and make castles and canals and entertain herself for hours, while her older sister was out on her pink lilo. One late afternoon two children with sad expressions came over to Mira and me carrying an inflated grey lilo. "Does your kid want this?" they asked with a Scottish accent. All I could focus on were the words "your kid". What a boost for a Big Mama! - Well, seriously... they wanted to give the lilo to Mira because they were leaving the next day. So the sad expressions were "end of holiday"-faces of course. And Mira's face! What a contrast! Happy, proud, shy, self-conscious, grateful. She didn't care for a moment that the lilo was grey and not her favourite colour pink.

Nice, but not a Big Mama lunch

Big Mama lunch

Lo-o-o-ng lunches are the best. I simply love this break when I'm on holiday, sunbathing or not. Wine and food and conversation and no hurrying back to duties. You can never indulge in this kind of lazy long lasting activity in your everyday life - not in Norway anyway, where your lunch break is thirty minutes. The southern Europeans have always understood the principle of long lunches, but because efficiency seems to decrease after these sessions - even if you include a small siesta - they too are beginning to prefer shorter lunches with no wine.

Another Bulgarian lunch

Yet another Bulgarian lunch, with friend Jon

But summer comes to an end. Getting out the electric pump and switching it to "deflate" really drives it home for me - there's huge and heavy symbolism in those colourful plastic things collapsing.

Bambi deflating - summer's almost gone

Back to daily routines!