Good Eggs

Dear All, I would love to publish photos but I DONT KNOW HOW. The old git says he will teach me how to do it when we return to Blighty. Until then you will just have to use your imaginations….
It’s 10.41 your time and late afternoon ours.
We have just driven back to the villa, covered in sand, cool box covered in sand, tortilla chips, covered in sand, water bottles covered in….well you get the picture…we arrived at Carillo beach by 10.30. 150 feet of sand before you get any of the Pacific on your toes, and then it’s warm and shallow.
A curved bay with not yellow, powdery sand but a gentle grey vulcanic sand that is soft enough.

Jim carried the cool box, B had her headphones on and her back-pack which carried her ipod, a book, two bottles of suntan lotion and MY towel.
I had my paper hat, which to this day is still damp, the second of STIEG LARSSON’S ‘Millenium’ trilogy and nowt else.
We tried to find Freddie’s secret beach, driving down a track next to the local school, past two mansions owned by foriggners, with East Sussex countryside to the right and howler monkeys on the left. After Jim had succeeded in turning the four wheel drive truck into a fairground ride, whacking B’s head on the roof and spilling most of my goodwill, we decided to turn back and head for the beach we knew.
Imagine if you will a gently rolling Pacific. Palm trees waving in the balmy breeze, the sound of noisy birds having a chat and a bloke in a white van. I thought he may be selling bacon sarnies like the geezer on the side of the A26, but he had nothing but white plastic chairs and loungers.
A white couple from Sweden had hired two chairs.
The four local women, with their kids, had strung hammocks up between the coconut palms.
We laid out our towels and proceeded to do what Brits do on holiday, get sand in every orifice as well as the closed cool box.
I left the two of them and decided to walk 20 minutes one way and 20 minutes back, 40 minutes of fierce walking in the Costa Rican sun. I walked where the waves met the sand making sure I worked my weak ankle. The smell of the air was fishy only when I got to an outcrop of vulcanic rocks. Two women and a Staffordshire bull terrier walked towards me, we exchanged pleasantries on the way back. One of them had breast implants she looked like a Latino Pamela Anderson. I WAS wearing my red bikini, but Ursula Andress I am not, as I walked out of the ocean I had to roll up my bikini bottoms round my waist several times so that my drawers didn’t fall around my ankles into the foamy brine….
Fifteen minutes into my walk I passed two little pink crabs. The crabs leave their doodles all over the place, Jackson Pollock patterns all over the sand. They sidled sideways when they saw me, stood still, scuttled slowly away and then disappeared down a hole in the sand. I imagine their are colonies of crustraceous creatures all scuttling about under foot.
We are surrounded by animals. None of us can forgive ourselves for scaring off the little honey bear that came and visited. I thought it was a cat until I realised it had a long prehensile tail, Jim protected me and B wanted to take photos. But the little kinkajou came and went, we are all willing it to come back but no luck so far. They are very kind to their dogs here, and they all appear to be bitches, yesterday I passed a great big Alsation frolicking in the foam with a tiny little splodge of a thing. But apart from the Staffy owned by Ms Implant the only other person on the beach was a young boy who was Canuting…attempting to stop the waves. Impossible my friend, time and tide etc.
I arrived back exactly 40 minutes later. It was hot and time for lunch. I had made a huge green salad with a mayo dressing, the tuna from the fishing trip was wrapped in silver tin foil, a pack of corn wraps, two bottles of water, two cans of beer, and a bag of tortilla chips were laid down on a table under the trees. The stools and table were made of concrete, hot under the bum, but perfectly situated for our little luncheon party. If only the bloke in the white van had sold a good cuppa of Yorkshire tea the repast would have been more than perfect.
Then it was time for another paddle in the Pacific before an hours worth of reading and sunning. To be honest ‘The Millenium Trilogy’ is not the most ideal thing to be reading in 82 degrees of tropical heat, but I can’t put the damn things down. As the the partying continued last night in Samara I was hunched under my 40 watt light bulb reading about murder, intrigue and nasty goings on in the freezing winter of Sweden….
It doesn’t matter what time I go to bed I am up with the sun.
Breakfast is a singular affair. Jim has his toasted bread with freshly made coffee, I have a the biggest paw-paw all to myself, remembering to throw the skin and pips over the hedge and B has taken to eating ‘Uncle Edggars’.
Two hard boiled eggs mashed with butter and eaten out of a bowl, the tradition was passed down from Jim’s grandmothers side. May Beevers’ brother Edgar Gaunt was known for his proclivity for soft boiled eggs. Jim introduced us to ‘Uncle Edggars’ one holiday years ago. So it’s become a holiday tradition.
Uncle Edgar was renowned for his filthy glasses, he could just see through a clean patch in the centre of the lens. He was considered clever by Jim’s step-grandad, Arthur Beevers, because he had written an essay in a soft backed exercise book which he kept in a cupboard with his red, marbled, Conway Stewart fountain pen. The Beevers may have dealt with cattle as the name ‘Beevers’ comes from the occupation of raising beef cattle, although it was the chickens that Uncle Edgar preferred. When asked by his sister May what she could get him he’d look through his filthy glasses and say in his broad Yorkshire accent.
‘I’ll joot have an egg May, soft boiled.’
Little did he know that he would be immortalised every morning by his great, great neice here in Costa Rica. From the West Riding of Yorkshire to the West Coast of the Panama Isthmus.
So as Bob Marley entertains us, and we scoff the most perfect guacamole made by Uncle Edgar’s great, great niece we’ll raise a glass of rum and coke to Uncle Edgar and wish him ‘chuffin good ‘ealth’ wherever he may be.