On the wet sand, a couple of men are playing a game with bats a little larger than ping pong bats and a rubber ball about the size of a ping pong ball. It is a game which nobody wins. You just keep the ball in the air, to and fro, to and fro. Plip plop, plip plop, it goes on for hours; the players reach up and stretch forward, keep their eye on the ball all the time, with only an occasional miss. In the 10 years, during which we have been coming here, there has always been someone playing this game, just as there has always been someone walking from one end of the beach to the other, back and forth without remission.
As a rule I don´t like cocktails but for a birthday drink Heidi treats me to something called a Mojito. It is a sea-green, rum-based drink, flavoured with a bouquet of fresh mint leaves and tinkling with lumps of ice, through which you push your plastic straw. It is not sweet. I find the mint immensely seductive.
I notice, when swimming, that rowing boats and dinghies, seen from the level of the waves seem much closer than when they are viewed from the beach, a few meters a way. I think to myself that this is because, from the water level, you see the boats outlined agains the sky, while from a higher position on the beach, there is the moving background of waves, which makes them seem smaller.
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