Sunday, December 29

Several days ago we returned home to find a stack of furniture in the front garden, along with bits of old marble slabs. Anib had brought them here from his old house.

This morning two men arrived to strip and varnish the wooden settee and chairs. They sat in the front all morning and most of the afternoon.

Naa had her second neck massage today and she and Auo went to the beach for a couple of hours while Irma and I sat on the roof and read.

At 16:30 we went to Laughing Yoga and spent an hour laughing with eight other people. I enjoyed it a lot, both as an experience and as something to think about. Apparently it is a worldwide phenomenon, as you can see at laughingyoga.org.

Now we are walking back down to the beach. The safety tower has been erected for New Year, so the lifeguards can watch people drowning over the heads of the crowd.

We will sit in Leo with Harry while the girls play frisbee on the beach. We will be joined by Andy, a sewing machine engineer from near Ipswich who, with his wife Eileen, was at the laughing yoga session.

We will invite them to join us for our New Year meal.

At home I will be unable to drink a beer. I have arrived at that point we both reach every year, where the peculiar aftertaste of Kingfisher acts as a kind of anti-alcohol medication that prevents you feeling anything except slight nausea at the thought of pouring any in your mouth.

Kingfisher may be the world’s first self-regulating beer.