I’ve loved it in Hvar. Nazi war-crimes aside, it’s a truly lovely little island, filled with lovely… Croatians. Who split neatly into two distinct halves. The young women here are absolutely beautiful. Tall, lithe, gorgeous, fabulous, even when they’re dressed and not just lolling about in thongs. The other half are the males of the population. Dour, gruff, miserable, squat, cropped headed and more miserable. That’s it. Why fuck about? Let’s make sweeping generalisations about an entire population. Why not?

Though we’re only moving about an hour’s boat ride away, over to Split. So I have no high expectations of any major demographic shift in population types.

And that’s the thing with holidays. You arrive, you dump your bags, dive in the pool and you’ve instantly found ‘home’. You get attached. You get your own little bit of the bay for your morning swims, even though without the investment in water shoes (12 Euros a pair) you’d be having your feet bandaged every day after walking across the ‘beach’. And I get attached to breakfast. So there’s two choices: accept the temporary and fleeting nature of any holiday resort and the fact that you’re always going to leave. Or marry the local barman and stay f’rever. Acknowledging that ‘f’rever’ generally only lasts til winter starts, 3 months after the ‘I dos’.

The sea here is warm-ish. The word banded about by those in there is ‘refreshing’. I’m a cold-water-phobe. I drink it (if there’s nothing better on offer), but I can’t walk in. It reaches my knees; first stop. It reaches my testicles!!!, much longer stop. The entry process takes 20 minutes. On a good day. But here there’s a pier, from which I can dive in. And despite all of the above, I love that. The instant shock of the cold (which is not really that cold otherwise I wouldn’t fucking entertain the thought), the swim warming me up, ahhhhhhh. I can’t catch Mel, she’s part-fish. But I dawdle across the bay watching the real fishes as I go and looking out for the vipers which are indigenous here but they never told me before I came. And obviously don’t hang around in the sea, but ya never know.

To the ferry!!!!

Happy Thursday

A xxxx