The winner takes it all

There’s nothing like a relaxing beach day we thought to ourselves as we made our plans for today, so that is what we decided upon. We needed to get some work done first though, plus the girls were still sleeping so there was no real rush. Because of all the misfortune of last night we hadn’t had the chance to get to a supermarket so there was nothing in the house for breakfast, although I did still have my trusty coffee so I was set. Once the work was done and everyone was awake we headed out to a beach, first off though we needed to pick up some suncream, as we were just about out, and some food obviously because everyone was hungry. We found a bakery and picked out a variety of cheese slices for our lunch and then headed off for the beach so we could properly enjoy both them and the rest of the day.
To get to the beach we had to negotiate a little section through the water but this was not a problem and we made it round and picked out a spot to set up. We got the umbrellas up and finished off the suncream lathering up, then I had a quick dip in the water to cool off. We all passed around the cheese slices so we could sample all the varieties and while doing this a gust of wind uprooted our umbrellas, one flew over my head and I plucked it out of the sky one handed, seriously impressing Allegra. Jess also caught the other one, although for some reason Allegra wasn’t as impressed by that. I blame the patriarchy. We then gathered some larger rocks to put around the base of the umbrellas hoping that these would stop it from happening again. One thing we couldn’t understand was why none of the other umbrellas along the beach seemed to have the same issue as hours, some Greek version of Sod’s Law no doubt. We then finished our lunch and the girls went in the water, only for one of the umbrellas to go off again. Jess chased after it, and it was one of those situations where just as she was about to grab it, another gust would blow it along further, which is quite humorous to those watching, less so for Jess chasing it. But catch it she did, and then we went for the belt and braces approach of tying them up with a sarong to stop it happening again. Meanwhile the girls were having a great time in the water. At this point Jess was saying how she was finding Skopelos to be a difficult place and she wasn’t able to relax. I told her she shouldn’t worry so much about little things like umbrellas blowing away and that she should just take it easy. Literally as we were having this conversation Olivia started screaming that she was going to die and was making her way out of the water, although it was hard to tell if she was upset or laughing. Of course it was the former and it turns out she had been stung by a sea urchin on her hand as she was climbing around some rocks in the sea. She had 9 broken off points in her palm and was quite distressed, as she had been told they were poisonous, so between that and the pain she was not happy. We all then adopted our fallback positions, I stressed and didn’t do much, Ruby made jokes about her dying and sang Taylor Swift songs, Allegra alternated between laughing at Ruby and worrying about Tate, Jess just dealt with it. She stayed calm and started getting the spikes out and I eventually came to and googled what to do, You can always rely on Google in a situation like that, you start with possible chronic pain but it is a quick click to paralysis, respiratory failure and death. I decided to just provide the first possibility. Vinegar seemed to be the solution so Jess took Olivia off to the shop to get some while we packed up and followed a few minutes later. The man in the supermarket was apparently very helpful, washing it out, providing vinegar and some antiseptic as well as ice to help with any swelling. He was most reassuring that they would not be poisonous, although we didn’t 100% trust his medical training so popped into a pharmacy to be told pretty much the same thing. As I write, Olivia is still with us so Google’s worst predictions have not come true.
Our relaxing time had been interrupted so we needed to come up with something else to do. We decided to visit the church from Mamma Mia which is on this island, we do love a good ABBA ref in our family. It was another adventurous drive so I just took it easy as we had had enough fun for the day. Once we got there the girls decided they were going to recreate the scene from the film where Meryl Streep sings ‘The winner takes it all’, this involved Ruby running up the steps in the hot, hot sun. She is not the fittest, and hadn’t eaten a lot so she got a bit dizzy from it all and it took her quite a while to recover. But we made it up the 192 steps and enjoyed the view, even though the church was not where any of the filming was done. We headed back down, with Ruby struggling still and having to sit down a couple of times. We got some drinks at a little cafe to have a rest and then the girls finished their filming. Then it was back to urchin beach to cool off, Jess hadn’t even had a chance to swim earlier. So we did that, picked up some food from our favourite supermarket doctor, thanked him once again, and then headed for home. As I alluded to in the first sentence, there is nothing like a relaxing beach day, and today was certainly nothing like a relaxing beach day. Hopefully tomorrow.Weiterlesen