Image Credit: Compilation/Jennifer Stahn

Last weekend I made a ghastly mistake, one that will affect my life forever. I went to the beach. 

I should have known better, but it was stiflingly hot at home and I thought an afternoon at the beach would be one of pleasure and relaxation. My mistake began to become apparent when I tried to park. Since I last went to the beach, all but five parking spaces close to the lake had been built over to provide vast, vulgar houses for dentists, so I had to park half way to the next town.

Arriving (eventually) on foot, I was running out of sweat. Looking around the grassy area above the beach I could see that 100 per cent of the shade had already been claimed by pasty white people who clearly were too sickly to endure direct sunlight. Or vampires. Being of more robust constitution, and determined to make the best of it, I removed my shoes and trotted gaily onto the sand. It took three or four strides for me to realize that my footprints were lined with smouldering layers of skin from the soles of my feet. I ended up dancing back to the grass like a drunken Cossack.

Shoes re-donned I searched for a spot to call my own. This was more difficult than I had expected. Half the beach was filled with loud, crude teenagers exercising their rampant hormones in ways which suggested they could use a good hosing down. The other half was lousy with yelling kiddies running about spraying sand on the old and unwary.

Eventually I found a spot in the middle and set up my little beach chair and opened my cooler. I pulled out my baguette. Inexplicably, almost impossibly, it was already coated in a fine, crunchy layer of sand. My wine was warm.

After ten minutes I could feel myself roasting. I considered entering the lake, but the idea of bathing in raw sewage is never a pleasant one. Not really swimming is it? Just going through the motions.

I decided to endure the relentless sun a few minutes longer and tried to relax, idly digging about in the sand with my dangling hand. Until my fingers touched something warm, soft and rubbery. I didn’t dare look.

Then a very large person of the opposite sex arrived with two small children and planted herself in front of me. She knelt, facing away from me, and started helping the kiddies build some sort of sand structure. For reasons which must never be explained she appeared to be wearing a thong. Or perhaps it was just a normal bathing suit which had been sucked into the enormous vortex between her gigantic buttocks. Her cheeks were wobbling. They looked like two huge jellyfish, fighting.

Now I lie awake at night realizing this is something I can never un-see, but at the time I simply couldn’t look away. It was horrible, but strangely compelling. And at least it gave me some shade.

— The Grumpy Old Git just doesn't care if you don't like his socks and sandals.

News from © iNFOnews, 2014