To beach or not to beach ...

We finally got it together to go to the beach a couple of days ago. We live on a limestone plateau about one thousand feet above sea level, but it's only a twenty minute drive to the Adriatic. Most days I run or walk along the edge of the plateau and look down across the coastal plain to the sea. In the Winter the sea is often wild and steely grey, with a white fringe at the shoreline as it roars onto the beaches of the deserted little towns and holiday resorts. But in August it is nearly always calm and azure blue, blending at the horizon with an equally blue, equally serene sky. You can practically feel it calling you, "come on down, I am cool, come and lie on the beach next to me, come and jump in." But, it takes a lot to overcome the torpor that descends in August. There is the car to pack, stuff to find, traffic to be negotiated. It all seems too much.

We went to our favorite spot, a little resort which has grown up around an old Watch Tower. We rented two sunbeds and an umbrella and it was so crowded that we had to follow the beach attendant for a couple of hundred meters before he could find a big enough space to set them up. Even then some people complained that they had already claimed the spot. The Attendant smiled at them and said "there's loads of room, you can all pretend that you're one big family." Then we settled down to read and sunbathe. Later on we swam and then ate lunch in one of the little Lidos on the edge of the beach, actually more a collection of shacks decked out for the Summer. I had barbecued fresh octopus in a bread roll, deliciously tender, the oily marinade dripped onto my T shirt as I bit into it.

With so many people around it is actually easier to be anonymous than when there are just a few. There is no room to pose or to stake out much territory, there is just room enough to be. In true Italian style some families are preparing three-course lunches amid the throng. Young women work on their tans, men play cards, babies cry, old ladies adjust their hats and hitch their nickers, all part of one great clump of humanity.

One person seems apart from the rest of us. A black man in bright African colours wanders the beach weighed down with hats, sunglasses and trinkets. His is the only black face on the beach. He probably makes a pittance, paying over most of his takings to some petty criminal. Not wanting to buy anything I avoid his gaze and let him pass on, as does everyone else. I feel a vague sense of unease before I return to the paperback I am reading.