The Dirty Dozen

We arrived in Alicante at around half past seven in the morning. It was already warm. We walked around for a while and then we found the sea. Despite being tired, unwashed, and it still being before 8 o'clock, we went for a swim.

We locked our bags to a lifeguard flagpole and stripped to shorts. And the sea was warm. It was fantastic. There was this floating plastic thing a hundred metres out with a diving board on it. Great fun was had by all.

After breakfast we started looking for the bus that would take us to the camp site - and what do you know? We were already stood right next to the bus stop. Things were looking up. The camp site was about 10KM from the town itself, but it had a beach 200m away. Great stuff. We set up the tent and went for another swim. Then we sunbathed all afternoon.

By evening my chest and back had gone "English Tourist Pink", and hurt. A lot. Half a bottle of Aftersun later and I could lay down without being in agony. It was bound to happen.

We made contact with the Grandparents, and our luck was in - they were going to be in Alicante at the start of the following week playing golf, so they would pick us up from the airport. That gave us five days of sitting around in the sun doing nothing much but swimming and sunbathing and nursing my pink skin back to health. Hard life.

On the last night in Alicante we decided to save a bit of cash by sleeping down on the beach. Then night before we'd got talking to two German girls and a Belgian chap who spoke better English than I do. They were staying at the camp site too, and as it was their last night, they thought they'd follow suit and join us. Then Jim The American decided to join us. Jim was a long term traveller, and the closest thing to a hippie we had met. He scraped by playing his guitar in the streets. Rather American, but other than that he was a thoroughly nice chap. Then we invited this Australian chap called Brad who had arrived that day. And this new Polish couple (we had already forgotten about the other two).

After having a bite to eat, we all piled down to the beach with a big bucket full of ice, and many, many beers. After a couple of hours we were joined by three German lads from the camp site, making it an even twelve - Two Englishmen, Five Germans, An American, An Australian, A Belgian and Two Poles.

Despite our ability not to use the rather tasteless German joke, the conversation soon came round to English humour. It turns out that Monty Python is our finest export, and everyone was a fan. It was actually the Germans who brought up the Funniest Joke in the World sketch, and they laughed hardest at my rendition of Hitler at the Nuremberg rally saying "My Dog's got no nose... how does it smell?.... Awful".

Nice to see we've put all that unpleasantness behind us.

I went back and forth between learning Polish insults, insulting the American, talking rock music with the Belgian, football with the Germans (5-1) and spiders and dangerous Koala bears with the Oz. Great night.