A great source of amusement to us at our hotel has always been the manoeuvres, skirmishes, dodgy moves, waving arms, raised voices and occasional threats that come from those who seem to think that they have the God given right of claiming a particular beach front or poolside lounge seat. I know how the system works and have observed it. After being at the market before dawn I'm usually on the beach at sunrise to watch the towels come out,and the depositers vanish.
We really don't give a stuff as we take two lounges well back from the beach that are in the shade of the trees, one of which, as the morning progresses gains full sunshine, herself lies in the sun for the rest of the day and after two weeks this time she has again turned a lovely shade of pink which pees her off no end cos after a couple of rides on the scooter I brown up. These two lounges are at the steps from the pool and always get the first serving of complimentary hand towels and fruit much to the chagrin of the front row towel hogs if there is 100% occupancy and the friut runs out.
There was at the hotel a family from Perth, Grandad,Grandma, Mum and Dad and two littlies. Grandma had had two strokes, had a brace on her leg and walked with a stick and walking over the sand for her was a no no. Grandad, Dad, Mum and the eldest child were out for the day on a white river tour leaving Grandma with her grand daughter at the hotel. Grandma was just about to place her towel on a couple of vacant poolside seats when this arrogant bully from Europe abused the hell out of her TOOK HER WALKING STICK AWAY and waved her away the with a mouthful of undecipharable language. We didn't see any of this,we heard about it at breakfast the next morning. What the abuser was unaware of was that her son in law went about 6'6" and must have weighed in as a super heavyweight. What we did witness was the hold, the throw and the splash of the abuser when he hit the pool.
Same day later in the morning we were standing watching the kids enjoying the supervised water sports at the pool. Talk about laugh, they were trying to fill 2" 4'( 50mm x 1200 I think ) long poly piping with buckets of water. The pipes were full of holes and the kids were thoroughly enjoying getting soaked to the skin whilst trying to perform an impossible task. When you all get to my age you will find that there are occasions when you simply got to put your arse down to relieve the legs, so I did as there were two empty lounges nearby with a towel on each that were unrolled. I was immediately greeted with a gutteral volley of Teutonic invective and waved away by a couple occupying the closest two seats to those on which I parked my bum. He was wearing his original Afrika Corps cap and she resembled Eve Braun, the invective continued and continued and attracted rather a lot of attention. My dear wife begged me to quit the scene and not become involved and I did but not before I put my face in his, looked at his wife, looked back at him indicating her and whispered the only word I know that he would understand. SCHLUMPER.
Next morning well before the towels are handed out the Afrika Corps marches out with four towels that he had retained fron the previous day, after he vanished I kindly returned his towels for him only to see them almost immediately filled by a family of five.
Her endeth the towel hog tales.