“This article is nothing more than PR damage limitation for Elle MacPherson after her former tax advisor, Mrs Mary Ellen Field, gave evidence at the Levenson Inquiry into media ethics this week.”

Mrs Field described how she lost her job, suffered serious ill health and was bullied into attending Ms MacPherson’s former rehab centre for (non-existent) alcoholism after MacPherson wrongly accused Mrs Field of leaking details of her private life to the press.  These accusations have since been proved to be totally untrue and in fact the leaks were due to Elle MacPherson’s phone being hacked by the tabloid press.  Since Mrs Field lost her job due to these totally false allegations she has not heard a word from her former client and Elle MacPherson refuses to enter into any discussions on the matter of phone hacking in general or Mrs Field in particular.

Instead of doing the rounds of the popular press this week in such a desperate act of self-promotion, Ms MacPherson would be better viewed by those who have been following the Levenson Inquiry by making a public apology to Mary Ellen Field.

“Sorry Mary Ellen.  I was wrong.”   How hard can it be?

I usually watch the very poignant Remembrance Sunday events every year when more than 7,000 ex-servicemen and women march past the Cenotaph, followed by civilians including 60 war widows and charity representatives and it never fails to bring a lump to my throat.

During the two minutes’ silence I reflect how lucky I am that I live in a free country and give silent thanks to those who gave their lives to make that possible.

The last time the Cenotaph was featured prominently on the news was during the student riots last December when Charlie Gilmour, son of the Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour, was pictured swinging from the Union flag on the Cenotaph. He has recently lost his appeal against his 16 months sentence for violent disorder including breaking a window in Oxford Street, theft, attempted arson and throwing a rubbish bin at the Royal car containing Prince Charles and his wife.  The crown court judge had accepted that the incident at the Cenotaph did not form part of the violent disorder, but described it as “outrageous and deeply offensive behaviour”.

Indeed.  What I find most “outrageous and deeply offensive” is that the best defence that 21 year-old Charlie could muster – a Cambridge history student no less – was that he did not realise the Cenotaph is a War Memorial. So that’s OK then.

For sheer pig-ignorance alone, this pampered disrespectful little twonk deserves every minute of his sentence and should probably serve a further six months for the criminal waste of his parents’ money on his highly privileged education.

The Charlies of this country should remember that countless thousands of lives have been lost so that we can enjoy the genuine privilege of living in a democracy where peaceful protests are possible, and this privilege should never be abused.

Perhaps Charlie was watching the Remembrance Sunday coverage on the TV in his jail cell this morning.  If so, I hope he will have learned what the Cenotaph represents, and maybe a bit of humility too.  He will also have seen an interview with ten year-old Lydia Cross who was going to be marching past the Cenotaph with those much older than her.

Lydia lost both her legs due to meningitis when she was two. She has raised over £60,000 for Help The Heroes and is planning to do a sponsored mountain climb to raise more. Maybe Charlie could join her.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15711333

Organisers of the student march through central London yesterday expressed bitter disappointment that 2000 demonstrators marched peacefully in a protest against higher tuition fees and “privatisation” in universities without making a blind bit of difference to anybody or anything anywhere apart from police overtime payments.

Media coverage was scarce apart from a brief teatime report of the protest on Sky News sandwiched between the announcement of this year’s “I’m A Celebrity” contestants and an item on Jimmy Savile’s funeral.

Professional “student activist” 81-year-old Clare Solomon was livid. “I’ve been organising student protests and rabble-rousing since I started my degree 50 years ago and I’ve never seen anything like it. Where is everybody? I was expecting at least 50 thousand. Maybe even 50 million. We are the 99% Club after all.”

Solomon and the other organisers blamed threats of police brutality on the poor turnout. “Last year tens of thousands marched. All hell broke loose just like I said it would. People came with rocks and snooker balls to chuck at the Feds. Somebody chucked a fire extinguisher off of the top of Millbank Tower. Loads of windows were smashed and I got on the telly and everything. It was brilliant. This year we have to stick to the agreed route and behave ourselves or else. And there’s loads more police so we can’t break windows or go running around anywhere we want to or break into buildings or anything. Call this a democracy? Britain’s nothing more than a police state. It’s worse than Syria.”

There was a brief flurry of excitement around lunchtime as a small motley group of demonstrators broke away from the agreed route and quickly set up 30 “pop-up” tents at the base of Nelson’s Column. These however were quickly removed by a chasing group of constables within about half an hour.

“We were going to stay here until at least March just like the St Paul’s lot,” said media studies student Dave Miggins as he was led away to a police van “but the Filth lured me out of my tent with a Pot Noodle and a couple of Curly-Wurlys and I couldn’t help myself. Fascist bastards.”

When asked to comment about the latest attempted occupation, St Paul’s Anti-Capitalist Camp spokesperson Sago Soresson said: “Who were those awful copycat proles in Trafalgar Square? We thought of it first. How dare they? They’re just putting more money into the capitalist coffers of Millets. We, at least, have been knitting our own tents.”

Millionaire Guardian columnists Polly Toynbee and George Monbiot came with megaphones to address the protesters at the end of the march to offer their solidarity and to assure everybody that it was only their newspaper (from the tax-dodging Guardian Media Group) that would report the protest in a fair and unbiased fashion. The megaphones weren’t needed however, as there were just three protesters and two dogs left at Moorgate by the time they arrived. All the others had quickly dispersed – as the police had requested – the minute Billy Bragg started singing.

“He was doing my head in,” said one student later on the tube. “That tuneless old git turns up at all the marches. Why? Who is he?”

U2 megastar and charity fund raiding god Bono had been invited to join the march but had to pull out at the last minute because he had misplaced his sunglasses. There was also a diary clash with an accountant in his Dutch tax haven so “No can do – sorry”.

A few weeks ago, I was woken from my slumbers by a call from my slightly loopy but endearing friend – let’s call her Saffron. She is really REALLY pissed off with her husband because he is a rich capitalist bastard AND IT’S JUST NOT FAIR that he won’t share out any more of his ill-gotten gains with her and her friends just because they haven’t worked as many hours as him. It’s ruining her life and can she come and stay for a couple of days because she hasn’t got anywhere else to go except back at her parent’s holiday home and they aren’t too keen on that idea?

“Er …. OK. But just for a couple of days mind. The family is coming for lunch at the weekend.”

Saffron arrives with a huge rucksack and three friends – who also have huge rucksacks.

“Hope you don’t mind – I’ve brought Tapioca, Sago and Semolina with me. We’re going to hold a protest against rich capitalist bastards like my husband. Here. In your house. Can I borrow your computer? I’m going to publicise it on Facebook. It’s going to go viral.”

“Oh. Errrrm ….. fine. Tea and biscuits?” I say.

Saffron was correct. It did go viral – as in ‘spread like a virus infecting my house’. Over the next few days my house guests multiplied from four, to eight, to 16, to 32, to 64. Then I lost count. Tents were set up in the front garden when the floor space in the living room ran out. They held debates three times a day about how they were going to “Achieve Change in a Truly Democratic Way”. Ideas were proposed and debated at length and all were rejected because all they could ever agree about was that everybody had to agree on any propositions and there was never a 100% consensus on anything.

I was getting through an alarming amount of toilet paper and teabags. My cleaning lady had resigned because the vacuum cleaner was clogged up with the biscuit crumbs and remains of wholemeal hand-knitted tofu sandwiches which were littering the carpet. My friends and family were refusing to visit because they said the stench of BO and marijuana was making them gag.

On day five I found Saffron in the garden strumming “We Shall Overcome” on an out-of-tune ukulele.

“Look Saff, do you think you and your mates could go and do your protesting somewhere else now please? The hall is totally blocked by rucksacks, camping stoves, ponchos, Wellingtons and vegan sandals. It’s a real hazard. If there was a fire, we couldn’t get out.”

“Oh sorry” said Saffron. “We’ll take all our stuff upstairs and dump it in your bedroom. No problem. Oh, could you get some more teabags? We had a debate about it this morning and everybody agreed that we prefer Earl Grey to that Yorkshire crap in your kitchen. And why don’t you have any coffee? Some of us are having to go to Starbucks. Ta.”

I set up a campbed in my shed. One night I was woken up by the sound of somebody fiddling with the garden gate. I stuck my head out of the shed door and saw about 50 of the comrades in the garden.
“Oh, are you leaving?” I asked hopefully.
“No we’re just going home for the night. It’s getting a bit cramped and uncomfortable and Hugo has broken your sofabed. We’ll be back in the morning to carry on with the protesting. Oh, we had a meeting about your biscuits. Everybody agreed that they aren’t that nice. Could you get us some better ones? You’ve run out of toilet roll again too.”

Next morning I came into the kitchen to find a middle-aged woman knitting some yoghurt.
“Hallo. I’m Moonface. I’ve come to protest about public sector pensions.”
“What do you do in the public sector? Nursing? Teaching?”
“Used to be a traffic warden. Then I set up a business selling lunch boxes to City workers. Tofu-filled filo pastry parcels and a carton of mung bean juice go for £10 each. Those rich bastards can afford it. I make a bundle.”
With a sigh I decided to go out for some fresh air and shopping to replenish the teabag, toilet roll and biscuit stocks.

When I opened the front door, a short, dumpy, hatchet-faced woman was coming down the garden path holding a megaphone. “Hallo. I’m Polly Toynbee from the Guardian.”
The multimillionairess, private school fee-paying, three houses-owning, patron(iser) of the “poor and downtrodden” Polly Toynbee who trousers £120,000 a year penning self-contradictory drivel for the tax-dodging Guardian Media Group, plus God know how much more from her book deals and far too frequent TV appearance fees, has come to address the comrades and tell them they have a perfect right to occupy my house, that they have her full support and she so admires what they are doing. Yes, that Polly Toynbee. The very same.
Christ Almighty, this is all I bloody well need.

“Errrrm Polly,” I pleaded. “Would you mind putting them up in one of your houses? You have so much more room than me, and seem to know what they are on about.”

“You want them to leave??” Polly shrilled. “But you invited them here! Good grief, you are just as bad as THE FILTY CAPITALISTS! How very dare you? You own this whole house and have nice stuff! You middle-class hypocrite! You even employ a cleaner for God’s sake!! THAT’S JUST NOT FAIR!!!”

I’d had enough. My ears were starting to bleed, so grabbing Polly’s megaphone I addressed the throng in my living room:

“Listen Comrades. In the first place, my now ex-cleaning lady cleans my house far better than I can and I pay her more than twice the minimum wage. Yes I could sack her and do my own cleaning but what would that achieve? I would have a dirtier house and her kid would have fewer Christmas presents. Would that be fairer?”

“In the second place, I have what I have and own what I own by the expedient of getting up before dawn and working my arse off for decades and never claiming a penny off the state let alone taking the food out of the mouths of single mothers on benefits. And I did all that as a single mother myself.”

“In the third place, you claim to be against war, poverty and injustice. Who isn’t? If you want ‘Change’, however you wish to define it, as we are fortunate enough to live in a democracy, take your heads out of your navels, set up your own party, stand for election with some half-coherent policies and see if anyone will vote for you. Now THAT would be fair.”

“And in the fourth place, if you were to hang the evil capitalist 1% from the lampposts and shut down the banks where will that get you, beyond throwing tens of thousands more ordinary people out of work in this country alone? You claim you are protesting against Corporate Greed and that you are going to stay here protesting until…. until what? Until Corporations stop being Greedy? Well good luck Comrades, because you are going to have a bloody long wait and I am going to die in my shed. Since the dawn of time people have been setting up businesses with the sole aim of making money. Lots of money. As much money as possible. A by-product of which is that they can afford to create jobs which employ people. Lots of people like you and me. If these Evil Greedy Corporations were not interested in making lots and lots of lovely moolah they would set up charity shops instead. Except even charities want to make money and even more money judging from the mountain of begging letters coming through my door thanks to the charities that I do support selling on my details to other charities. Yes, for money. The CEOs of these Evil Greedy Corporations work insane hours at their pointless jobs and go to their early graves never having seen their families – that’s if they have found the time or energy to marry and procreate. It must be a horrible life and they pay themselves vast amounts of money to make up for it. It’s the way the world works and it is not going to change one iota no matter how long you sit mumbling in my living room. You might as well be protesting against cheese!  Deal with it. Put up with it. Shut up. Grow up. And above all PISS OFF OUT OF MY HOUSE!!”

There was a stunned silence interrupted by a knock at the door. A slightly grubby teenage girl wearing dreadlocks and a rucksack pushed past me saying: “Hi. I’m Skylark. I’ve come to join the protest.”
“Are you an anti-capitalist?” I asked weakly.
“What’s one of them? I’ve come to protest against cheese. I bloody hate cheese I do. Cheese is horrible cheese is. Expensive. Disgusting colour. Smells minging. IT’S JUST NOT FAIR. And I’m staying here until cheese changes its expensive evil stinking ways. Got any biscuits?”

There was a sudden rush of blood from my head and I passed out ……

I wake up with a start in my own bed. I make my groggy way downstairs to get a cup of tea. My house is empty, clean and quiet. There are teabags in the cupboard and plenty of milk in the fridge. The phone rings. It’s my cleaning lady reminding me she is coming in tomorrow. Both of my beautiful glossy-haired successful hardworking children have left messages to arrange Sunday lunch. As I sip my tea I shake my head slightly and try to recall a horrible dream. No, it’s gone.

Turning on the TV news there is a scene of a tented village around the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral. People wearing plastic Guy Fawkes masks hold up a banner which demands to know: “What would Jesus do?”
Christ only knows. And he’s not telling.

We are being led to believe that there are 16,000 Brits ‘stranded’ abroad because this company has gone into administration, when actually all these moaning sunburned overweight chavs and their horrible fat children currently being given their 15 minutes of fame on GMTV are being told to continue with their holidays as normal and they will then be flown home by another airline. What’s the problem?

As for those who have had their holidays cancelled before they left the country – you will get your money back eventually because Goldtrail was ATOL and ABTA protected.  If you blow your benefit cheques on two weeks in a chavtastic resort on the Costa del Prole (in the kind of places that I would cheerfully surrender a year’s salary to avoid) paying less than your weekly budget for fags, supermarket lager, KFC and lard what do you expect?

And before you ask – Yes I am an unreconstructed snob.

Let me say this: When you tuck your children in tonight, stroke their flawless, unblemished tender skin and inhale the sweetness of their smell, thank whichever God you worship for their health and safety. Before you turn out the light and shut the door take one last look and ask yourselves the unthinkable and unaskable.

If your darling child should ever commit a hideous crime (yes YOUR child), would you rather have him thrown to the mob who doesn’t know him or you, or would you rather see him have a fair trial?

Thought so.

Before you ask how I would feel if anybody hurt any one of my family – yes I would want to seek them out and tear them limb from limb with my bare hands.  Fortunately there are laws and due processes to prevent that.

Let’s turn the question around.  No matter how unthinkable this may be  to most of us, if a member of your family were to be accused of a crime, however appalling, hands up how many of you would want any subsequent trial to be fair - and not a trial by mob or media?

Personally, I do not want to live in a country which would even contemplate the execution of ten year old children or lock them up for life, no matter how heinous and wicked their crimes.  To anybody horrified by the idea of the murder of a child, but who is nevertheless, even in the same breath, arguing that Thompson and Venables should have been hanged or sent to the gas chamber may I recommend they read As If by Blake Morrison, a harrowing but well considered account of this dreadful crime and the subsequent trial of two very damaged children and its implications.

Maybe I’m just allergic to rows, but there is something about the rush of adrenalin and the ensuing heightened blood pressure that actually causes me to shake and feel physically sick.  And, for me, throwing up is the Worst Thing in the World.  It’s my Room 101.  It is even worse than ironing.

I can see rows coming a mile away, and I used to avoid them like the plague.  Rows and shouting do not clear the air and make you feel better.  They can kill you.  Really.  I understand of course that it can be deeply frustrating for somebody who has psyched themselves up for a bloody good shouting match, only for me to derail the planned stropathon by squeaking pathetically while pushing them out of the door: “Look, no, please, please go away.  I can’t deal with you when you’re like this.  Please go away. Come back later and we’ll talk about it when you’ve calmed down. Please!”  I knew if I didn’t do this, I would explode into a horrible mess of undignified vituperation, almost all it totally unjustified and I would hate myself forever and ever.  And then I would throw up.  And the other person would win. And we can’t have that now can we?

I never ever have those sorts of shouty rows nowadays, especially with people who are dear to me.  With my loved ones, I tend to pause for a moment, shrug, and tell myself that in the great scheme of things it really doesn’t matter at all, and then let it go.  But I do know that some disputes are unavoidable, so (for the sake of my health if nothing else) I now deal with conflicts with good humour and logic, assuming a supercool demeanour.  Which of course is infuriating for the aggrieved party and very satisfying for me (and sometimes highly entertaining for anybody within earshot).  Because I always win.  It is not that I am particularly competitive and especially like winning, or have any wish to make the other person look foolish.  It is simply that I find it very pleasing to spot the fatal flaw in the opposing argument and shoot it out of the sky.  Often the ‘arguee’ will stomp off furiously thinking they have lost a war, but then later realise, on calm reflection, that actually all that has happened is that they have just had a really rather groovy debate over one or more points of pure logic.  That is my intention anyway.  Mostly.  (Very occasionally, I am in a playful mischievous mood and will wind people up just to see what happens.)

To give an example – one day at work I was having lunch with a group of my mates in the canteen when the conversation turned to house design.  One of the lunch party who had designed and built his own house said he wished he could have found a way to have his washing machine installed upstairs.  “Like the Americans do.”  This caused my brow to furrow slightly, but I have an open mind so I asked him why in God’s name he thought this could ever, even in a million years, possibly be a good idea.  In an open-minded sort of way.

Mate: “Think about it.  You take off your clothes upstairs and you change your bedding upstairs.  It’s all got to go in the washing machine, so why not have the washing machine upstairs too?  That’s what the Americans do.”

Me: “And where are you going to keep the washing machine?  In the corner of your bedroom?  Why not keep it downstairs in the kitchen or the utility room instead?  You know.  Where all the plumbing is.”

Mate: ”No. You would have a laundry room.  Upstairs.  That’s what the Americans do.”

Me: ”Sooooo …., instead of say, a four-bedroom house, you would design a three-bedroom house ….. with Upstairs Laundry Room.  Mmmmm, I’m still not sold on this.  What about drying the clothes?  You would have to lug all the wet washing downstairs to get it dry.  It is easier to carry dirty, but dry, laundry downstairs than clean, wet laundry, is it not?”

Mate: (growing increasingly tetchy)  ”No! Look, you would put all the wet laundry in the dryer beside the washing machine upstairs.  It’s what the Americans do.”

Me: ”Well that’s not very environmentally friendly is it?  And your electricity bills would be huge.  The only things I put in my dryer are small fiddly things like socks and knickers.  Large items like blankets, sheets, towels and jeans and stuff I hang up on the wooden clothes-horse thingy which dangles from my kitchen ceiling. That’s after I’ve taken them out of the washing machine that is plumbed into my kitchen.  And what would happen if your washing machine sprang a leak?  You’d have gallons of water pouring through the ceiling.”

Mate: (by now stumped for convincing counter-arguments)  “Well it’s what the Americans do!”

Me: “Just because Americans design their houses that way (which I very much doubt, because in every US-based movie I have ever seen that features a washing machine, it is always installed in the creepy basement where the spooky music plays, with a mad axe murderer lurking in the corner) that doesn’t make it OK.  The Americans have had lots of ideas.  Not all of them good ones:

“The Americans believe in the right to bear arms.  That’s not a good idea.

“The Americans elected George W Bush.  Not once, but twice.  That was a really bad idea.

“I bet Dubya keeps his washing machine upstairs in the White House to make darned sure it’s safe from terrorist attacks by pesky ole Al Qaeda.”

Mate: (picking up his lunch tray and stomping off)  “Christ Jackie, one of these days I’m going to put a bullet through your brain.”

See?  It’s just not worth it.  Don’t mess with me.

Sometimes, if the dispute looks like it’s taking longer than it should and I want to wrap it up quickly, I will go into ‘WHY?’ Mode.  Like small children do:

Mum:  Go and wash your hands.

Small Child:  Why?

Mum:  Because they’re dirty and we are going to have dinner.

SC:  Why?

Mum:  Because you’re hungry and you’ve got germs on your hands.

SC:  Why?

Mum: Because you’ve been playing with the dog and you can get sick if you don’t wash your hands.

SC: Why?

Mum:  Because germs make you sick.

SC:  Why? ……

This can go on for hours, however most Mums don’t have limitless time and patience and will usually scrub the kid’s mitts herself before the sausages get burnt.  And there’s an end to it.  Fast forward a few years and when people like me go into ‘WHY?’ Mode the outcome can be much the same.  Peace reigns and I get to eat my dinner with clean hands (figuratively speaking) with no effort required on my part.  No need to come to blows. You just exhaust your opponent’s patience.

I was on holiday with my daughter in the Caribbean this year at an upmarket five star resort.  Most mornings I would wake early and go and sit on the balcony, which overlooked the swimming pool, to watch the sunrise.  On the first morning at 6am, I witnessed a strange phenomenon.

A woman in a dressing gown appeared by the pool and spread two towels out on a couple of sunbeds.  Then, after glancing around guiltily, crept back to her room.  About 20 minutes later, a man appeared with another couple of towels and a book and bagged two more sunbeds in the same way.  Then he too went back to bed.  A few more people emerged and did much the same thing.  It was happening on the beach too.  It was like watching exotic jungle creatures marking their territory.

At about 10.30am, after breakfast, I was back in my room getting ready for the beach and I noted that the people I had observed at 6am still hadn’t used the sunbeds they had ‘reserved’ by the pool.  In fact, the man I had seen earlier at sunrise suddenly appeared, retrieved his book, left the towels behind and went down to the beach.

Personally, I take all of my stuff with me when I am ready to sit by the pool or on the beach.  And not before.  You can always tell if I’m using my sunbed, whether I am sitting on it or not.  It will be all sandy where my feet have been resting, the towel will have damp patches on it from my frequent dips in the sea, there will be a dog-eared book and a half-finished drink lying somewhere nearby and a pile of cigarette ends in the sand which I will scoop up and put in the bin at the end of the day.  No possible room for misunderstanding.

To go on holiday and then set your alarm clock for the crack of dawn, just to make sure that nobody else can sit on ‘your’ sunbed of choice seems, well, absolutely tragic.  Why put all that stress on yourself?  You are in the Caribbean of all places!  Pour yourself another rum punch. Chill out and relax Mon.

I had been to the same hotel the previous year and this sunbed bagging business wasn’t happening then.  “What could have changed?”  I pondered.

Over the next few days I quietly observed who was doing it.  Without exception, it was the whingers and complainers.  People who treated the delightful staff like servants, barking orders at them and not bothering even to say please or thank-you.  People who believed that because it was an all-inclusive resort and you didn’t have to pay for your drinks, then the more you drank the more money you saved.  The sort of people I hadn’t seen here before.  People, Gentle Reader, who are Chavs.

I reasoned that it must be the credit crunch.  These were probably some of the gullible idiots who believed the media scaremongering and, egged on by the likes of Fiona Phillips on GMTV, withdrew all their money from Northern Rock and stuffed it under their mattresses, thereby precipitating the self-fulfilling prophesy that is the 2008 British banking crisis.  Then decided to spend it all before they got burgled or their houses went up in flames.  Which just goes to show that you can’t buy either intelligence or class.

One day, there was a tropical storm over the whole of the island, but the next morning it was gloriously sunny.  We were lying on the beach at about noon when I glanced up and saw a man and his wife approaching three ‘towel reserved’ sunbeds that had been abandoned all morning.  Two of the sunbeds were under a parasol in the shade and another one in the sun (just in case obviously). This was the hatchet-faced couple I had overheard earlier complaining to the holiday rep about the food (no chips) and the rain and demanding to be moved to a different hotel otherwise they would be putting in a claim for compensation.  (Er… where to?  A hotel serving chips, that hasn’t been recently rained on?  How about the Portsmouth Travelodge?)  Now the wife was berating her husband because the three sunbeds he had bagged at dawn weren’t close enough to the sea, so she dropped some more towels on another two further down the beach.  Then they went off to lunch.  I was watching this pantomime with keen interest.

“Oh look,” I said to my daughter.  “It’s Proles ‘R Us.”

Lydia giggled.  “God Mum.  You are such a snob.”

“Possibly,” I said.  “But if getting pissed off with selfishness and bad manners makes me a snob, then so be it.  Look at that – they are now hogging five sunbeds and they aren’t sitting on any of them.”

Something had to be done about this, but what?  The hotel management can’t exactly put a notice in everybody’s room saying: “Don’t be so bloody selfish” so I decided on a more subtle approach.  It turned out to be an interesting social experiment.

Occasionally thereafter, if we arrived at the beach and found carefully folded up blue hotel towels on a pair of clearly unused sunbeds I would remove the towels and put them on another pair of sunbeds a few yards away and we would sit on the ‘bagged’ sunbeds ourselves.  Sometimes, if there was just a single ‘bagged’ sunbed under a parasol which had been vacant for a couple of hours, I would pull my sunbed into the shade beside it on the other side of the umbrella pole.  Then all I would have to do is lie back and wait for the fun to start.  Would anybody, I wondered, come back and have the nerve to tell us to move?  Actually, apart from one gloriously memorable occasion*, nobody did.  There was a lot of bemusement as if folks were suddenly not sure if they had returned to the right place, many, many black looks, and loads of huffing and puffing and tutting. But I lived to write this blog.

Once, just to mix things up a bit, I removed just one of the blue hotel towels from a pair of ‘bagged’ sunbeds and lay down on it myself, on my own sunbed a few feet away.  About an hour and a half later a young tattooed lad appeared and stared at ‘his’ sunbeds for a few moments as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

“Uh-oh,” Lydia muttered anxiously.  “It’s OK,” I reassured her, “let me handle this.”  I didn’t have to.

He ran along the beach, dragged his girlfriend by the hand the full 100 yards back again for her to confirm the evidence of his own eyes, pointed at ‘their’ sunbeds and shouted:  “Look Trace!  Somebody’s taken one of us towels!”  Then, after throwing an evil glance at me (“I can’t prove it, but I know it was you! Bitch!”), made the return 100 yard trudge to the other end of the beach to another pair of ‘bagged’ sunbeds.

Why, you might well ask, if there really were plenty of unused sunbeds and parasols, did I not just use them myself, and stop trying to wind people up so much?  Which is a very good point.  Sometimes I feel it is my mission in life to stop people being so selfish, petty and bad-mannered, because that winds me up. They needed to be shown the error of their ways:  It’s a private beach.  It was low season, and even if it wasn’t, unless the hotel was actually on fire, not everybody is going to want be on the beach at exactly the same time.  There are plenty of sunbeds for everyone.  Plenty of cushions and plenty of parasols and plenty of shade.  And it doesn’t matter where you sit on the beach – the view is just as beautiful. This isn’t some tatty resort on the Costa del Prole. And we are not Germans.

*One day after breakfast, I felt I needed a bit more sleep, so arranged with Lydia to meet up on the beach later on while I stayed in the room for a nap.  Around 11.30 I went down to the beach and found the kid lying in a nice shady spot.  I spread out my stuff beside her, ordered some drinks, and thus we settled down for a pleasant day of peaceful lotus-eating idleness.

After about ten minutes, I heard an annoyingly loud squawking noise somewhere very near to my left leg.  For a surreal moment I thought that a Birmingham-hatched seagull with the power of human speech had found its way across the Atlantic. I then remembered that seagulls generally don’t have their breeding grounds in the Midlands, so with curiosity getting the better of me, and taking my own good time, I put down my book, propped myself up on one slender elbow, slid my sunglasses slightly down my nose and peeped over the top of them.

The source of the disturbance was a portly, slightly pinkish, middle-aged couple, arms folded defensively across their ample stomachs, bristling with indignation and clearly spoiling for a fight.  I am never one to let the joy of a gentle piss-taking opportunity pass me by and I could see this was going to be fun.  BIG time.  Just what I had been waiting for.  “Good morning,” I smiled pleasantly.

Mrs Seagull: (spitting feathers)  “Did YOW take our towels off of them beds?”

Me: (innocently) “Not me, I assure you.  I just got here.”

Mrs Seagull (pointing): “Well we put our towels on THEM beds and then it started raining so we went back to our room!”

I immediately realised that the kid had followed my example, found a pair of ‘bagged’ but unused sunbeds and confiscated the towels. Excellent! That’s what I like to see!  Go Lydia!  Big respect!  I could tell where this was leading (and also with a tigress’s instinct to protect her cub) therefore, with no preamble and maintaining a polite effortless cool, went straight into WHY? Mode.

Me:  (with a puzzled expression) “Why didn’t you take your towels back to your room with you?”

Mr Seagull: (gruffly) “Because we wanted to keep them beds for us.  For when we got back to the beach like.”

Me: “Why?  There are plenty of other available sunbeds over there.  And just over there too.  My daughter has been here since 9am.  It’s now nearly lunchtime and, three hours later, you have only just arrived.”

Lydia had by now screwed her headphones tightly into her ears, turned her iPod volume up and was hiding, chortling silently, behind her book.

Mrs Seagull: “But we wanted THEM beds!”

Me: (persisting) “But why?”

This (to my mind) unanswerable question could have been the end of it, but by now I was thoroughly enjoying myself so I threw them a curved ball:

Me: “Were the towels your own personal towels or the hotel’s towels?”

Mrs Seagull: (snappily)  “They were the hotel towels that we left on them beds. What’s that got to do with it?”

Me: (cheerily – and deliberately missing the entire point) “Oh well, that’s alright then!  I’m sure the hotel will give you some more towels.  Just ask at the watersports hut over there.  They’ve got plenty” and with a helpful but dismissive wave in the direction of the hut, I pushed my sunnies back up my nose and settled down again behind my book. (Instead of apologetically getting up, prodding Lydia, gathering up our stuff, and murmuring grovellingly: “No, please DO have the sunbeds back. And take our towels TOO if you like. I’m so TERRIBLY sorry.  How very rude of us.” And then skulk away, horribly embarrassed, to the other end of the beach to eat slugs and worms.  As we were supposed to.)

I could see that we and Mr and Mrs Seagull were never likely to forge a lifelong and loving bond after this exchange so, with nothing to lose as she and her husband huffed off in defeat across the sand (to a perfectly good pair of vacant sunbeds ten yards away) throwing glowering black looks across their sunburnt shoulders, I was sorely tempted to correct their grammar and lightly call out: “Forgive me for saying so, but what I think what you meant to say was ‘THOSE’ beds. Or even ‘THESE’ beds. But please, not ‘THEM’ beds.  So common.”  But that would have been a bridge too far (and very bad manners on my part too).  I do know when to stop.  It was early on in the holiday and I didn’t want a bloody nose.  Or a bullet through my brain.

See what I mean?  Don’t mess with me.