Solo in Fuerteventura September 2026

My problem is I cannot sit still.

This morning, I found a perfect piece of beach with views over Corralejo harbour and some mountains in the distance, and twenty minutes later I was itching to go.

Where to? I asked myself with tired exasperation. Do I want to go back to Grandes Playas where I spent the day yesterday or do I head to Corralejo centre for a bit of window shopping and a string of leche y leche coffees, largo por favor.

There was nothing wrong with where I was sitting, perched on my neatly rolled up beach towel, my back against a cool stone wall, I was enjoying the shade from the said wall. People walked past me with enough frequency to allow for satisfactory people watching.

My bag was quite heavy, with 2 water bottles, 2 nectarines, a portable charger which weighed a ton, but I learned my lesson the first day, when I left the hotel without it and my phone died when I was searching for Ale-Hop shop in downtown Corralejo and I had a moment of panic as I could not find the way home without Google Maps so I had to search for a taxi rank along the main strip, red in the face, hot and sweaty. The taxi took less than 10 minutes and five Euro sixty.

So now I carried the brick size power bank and a cable with me everywhere which meant I would never need it again.

Yesterday I walked onto a beach littered with popcorn-like white clusters of not sure what exactly. I got prematurely excited about finding this curious product of nature, and started picking the pieces up, thinking they would make a nice change from the usual beach sand I collect on every holiday and display in a labelled jar in the downstairs loo. I managed to have stuffed several fistfuls of the popcorn nuggets into my backpack before I came across a warning sign that rhodoliths, that’s the scientific word for the popcorn, were small pieces of rock covered in algae and their removal from the beach was strictly prohibited and if ignored that they would be removed from my luggage at the airport and I would be fined. I sheepishly shook out all traces of the precious Canarian popcorn from my backpack.

Sand will do nicely. Unlike the black volcanic beaches of Tenerife, the sand here is white and golden, apparently, according to the same sign, partly due to the pieces of popcorn thingies breaking down and producing the white sandy beaches.

For the record, no popcorn police awaited me at the airport, I could have easily smuggled pieces of Fuerteventura national treasure in my suitcase.

Corralejo is pretty and all, but unless you rent a car or take taxis everywhere, you will end up walking everywhere. Everywhere is about half an hour walk. Half an hour to the harbour. Half an hour to Grandes Playas. Half an hour back. It all adds up. And it you are like me and cannot sit still, it adds up to serious mileage.

I walked 12 miles on my first full day here, but that was a recce day, so I had an excuse. The second day was meant to be a beach day but I still ended up walking 8 miles, no excuse.

If you are like me and you travel solo, like me on this occasion, and you have nobody to tell you, stop, enough walking, time for a coffee, or an empanada or whatever, then you will just keep walking until there is nowhere else to walk.

Against my better judgement, I got up from my perfect spot against the wall and walked towards Corralejo centre along the beach path between the rock pools and the giant cacti in the back gardens of elegant holiday villas.

But this time, I forced myself to take it easy and stopped at a lovely beach cafe, where I had two leche y leches one after another. I might be addicted. Thanks God Cafe Barcelona near Streatham station serves the exact same thing

It might be third time lucky for me and solo travelling. After swearing never to do it again last year, I ran out of willing companions to go on another trip with me only a month after the last one, and I really needed to go. I couldn’t explain why, but I had to go away. I couldn’t explain this any better, not even to myself. Especially not to myself.

Some teething problems persisted, such as how do I decide what to do each day. I found myself deciding, changing my mind, deciding the same thing again, starting to walk in one direction then doing a U-turn after 50 metres and self-mocking my idiotic mind. It’s not that I had many options here. It was Grandes Playas or Corralejo centre with a string of small beaches and usual tourist traps.

Evenings were easy. Hotel pool, followed by dinner, followed by a walk to Popcorn Beach at sunset. The sun didn’t set over the sea here, but it was still beautiful.

To minimise the awkwardness (mine), I returned to the same cafe I had had the two coffees earlier, this time for lunch. It worked. I was greeted as an old friend and as I was leaving after a plate of chicken wings and chips, I did so to the unison chorus of ‘see you tomorrow’ and energetic hand waves. I had just acquired my local in Corralejo! Shame I won’t be coming back, I have made other plans for tomorrow, at least for the time being.

As it turned out, I did go back.

Last night I chatted to a receptionist at my hotel and asked if she could recommend a place nearby I could maybe see the next day. She suggested El Cotillo village on the west side on the island. She suggested I took bus number 8. She went on her computer for longer than we both thought it would take to find the nearest number 8 bus stop. She was surprised it wasn’t stopping about 7 minutes’ walk from us, but she said it was stopping about 15 minutes’ walk away, could I walk 15 minutes? She looked at me doubtfully as if assessing my walking skills. Could I indeed! I had walked 3 hours today before getting to the reception, but I kept it to myself. She also reminded me that I would need to cross the road as the bus would come from the opposite direction from what I would expect in England. The El Cotillo trip was beginning to shape up as a challenge to both my fitness and my orienteering skills.

I felt I had to do it now, if only to prove myself to the receptionist, although at least three competing versions of how I wanted to spend my last full day here were swirling around my head. Grandes Playas sunbed, leche y leche cafe, another sneaky peek inside Ale-Hop, and a walk along popcorn beaches.

I went. I took an 11am bus from where the receptionist told me to take it from. The journey took an hour, the bus stopped at every possible parada solicitada on the way.

The bus route was interesting, we crossed a desert like area with hazy mountains in the distance, the route punctuated by solitary palm trees every few minutes.

The final stop, Plaza El Ermita in El Cotillo turned out to be in the middle of a building site. I walked to the sea, no beach, just rock pools exactly like the ones in Corralejo. I came here seduced by the promise of a quaint laidback fishing village. I was mis-sold. The fishing village was no more, replaced by a soulless bland village with not much to offer except the views over distant cliffs and beaches and an extensive construction project complete with cranes, diggers and continuous drilling sound.

After an hour of walking, I was done. I couldn’t even find a perfect cafe by the sea. It was time to go back to Corralejo and I just missed a once an hour on the hour bus. I was not waiting another hour. I walked into the nearest restaurant and asked the man who looked in charge where I could get a taxi. No English. The man called a lady, I repeated my question to the lady, the barrage of fast Spanish followed, from which I understood that there was no taxi rank here, por telefono solamente. I was determined. I asked for the number. She searched for the number on her phone and dictated it to me. One international phone call later during which I struggled to explain where I was, I gave the person on the other end names of two different streets and the name of the restaurant which was on the corner of the two streets. ‘Señora, you gave me 3 different locations, where are you?’ I passed my phone to the lady with a pleading ayudame, por favor. The taxi arrived 5 minutes later. The car journey back to Corralejo took only 15 minutes, and in another 15 I was sitting with my leche y leche largo by the sea at my local, the world order restored. I am now on my second coffee, having also squeezed in a Berry Paradise smoothie. Life is good.

Every time I stepped outside my hotel, I had a choice to turn left or I could turn right.

Left led to the popcorn beach, leche y leche cafe, Ale-Hop shop and eventually to Corralejo harbour.

Right was a half hour walk to Grandes Playas sunbeds, endless sandy beaches, the dunes, rock pools and chicken empanada from a rundown beach shack.

Both choices were equally enticing and this fact coupled with my exasperating indecisiveness meant that I had walked 50 miles in 5 days I had been here. All whilst wearing Ale-Hop pink EVA plastic beach sliders. My feet feel leathery to touch, my soles are aching the way they had not ached since, well, probably never.

Boring practical stuff:

My hotel was Hotel Arena Suite, Calle El Moro, 2, 35660 Corralejo, La Oliva, Fuerteventura, Las Palmas,

I booked through loveholidays. Third time happy customer. Half board.

It was a proper last-minute decision, possibly my personal record, booked five days before flying out. Because of that, my accommodation options were limited, but it worked out well.

Breakfast was the usual choice of full English, cheeses and cold meats, pancakes, eggs and omelettes, whichever way you liked them, stewed and fresh fruit.

I stuffed myself to my eyeballs on serrano ham and fresh baguette every day.

Dinner had a different national cuisine theme each day, with a selection of cute cakes, cheese board, etc. There was a complimentary shot of a different spirit or liqueur each day, but water was curiously not included in the dinner package, and a bottle of still water set me back €2 per night.

The hotel listed two swimming pools, but they were really two semicircular halves, separated by a narrow walkway. The pool was a perfect post-walk pre- dinner day cool off time.

Two resident cats, a fluffy grey and a really rotund fat black and white one. I called the latter Wellfed, after my daughter told me I couldn’t go round calling people fat, and that included cats.

There was a gym and a sauna, a games area with pool table, table tennis and darts.

Friendly and helpful reception staff, although they did suggest that ill-fated trip to El Cotillo, so perhaps do your own research as well if you decide to seek sightseeing advice from them.

The hotel was adults only, with a mix of all ages, mainly retired couples, but some younger crowd, and a few solos too.

If walking everywhere in the heat of the Canarian summer was not your thing, a taxi to the town centre was about €5-6 and took a few minutes.

By 10pm the hotel was dead quiet.

Perfect environment for a laidback relaxing holiday.

Drive from the airport took about 40 minutes.

The book that almost launched my writing career at seven years old

When I was seven years old, the government of Poland, the country I grew up in, decided that it was time to end my existence of feral ignorance and begin the long, drawn-out process of improving my mind through formal education. My parents complied, and off to school I hopped, dressed in a hideous, fire hazard cornflower blue polyester tunic dress with a white collar of the same fabric. Mousy-coloured pigtails and white knee length socks completed the look. I kept my school things in a not-yet-vintage leather satchel, which bounced and rattled on my back whenever I ran, which was most of the time.

I had extremely low expectations of school, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover how much I enjoyed it. Reading and writing were my favourite. So much so that a few months in, I felt my writing skills had reached the point where it made sense to start planning my life’s success around them. As soon as I mastered all the 32 letters of Polish alphabet, and learnt to negotiate the language’s often treacherous spelling rules (gżegżółka, rzeżucha,źdźbło), becoming a writer seemed the easiest and most obvious career choice.

My confidence boosted by full marks received in weekly spelling tests, I saw the path to literary success unfold clearly ahead. Truth be told, I had never enjoyed such clarity of vision ever again.

By first snow in my first year of school, I was ready to write my first bestselling story, and as it happened, in one of life’s perfectly timed coincidences, I was provided with a perfect story line for my book.

When I was seven years old, the school week in Poland stretched for six long days. We toiled in the classroom from Monday to Saturday, making sure we were well prepared to build a better stronger and ever more Communist Poland when it was our turn to do so.

Sunday was the only day allocated for rest and relaxation. It was also the day when my parents liked to celebrate God in all his glory, which meant getting up early, putting on my Sunday best, walking to a tram stop, taking a tram to church, sitting through Mass, and reversing the journey home just after midday. I saw church going as a boring and repetitive chore, much less fun than school, but there was nothing I could do about that. I spent the Mass hour dangling my feet from the pew and daydreaming. The church was all grey stone and hushed solemnity, which made me feel uneasy and weary. I did not share my parents’ religious fervour, but I knew better than to disclose this to them in any way. It took me another twenty years to come clean to them about my lack of faith. For now, there was no escaping Sunday morning trips to church.

That meant that rest and relaxation had to be squeezed into Sunday afternoon and evening. I was fine with it, because I knew by the time the day ended, I would have been rewarded with the best hour and a half of the week, in the form of another episode of the Odyssey mini-series on TV. I was transfixed by the story from the opening line. ‘Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, left his home many years ago, and has not yet returned’. I remembered the line well, as it was repeated every week by the voice-over summary of previous episodes. The line sounded so perfect and powerful to me, that I decided to use it as an opening line of my own first novel, which I also decided to call, naturally, The Odyssey.

Every day I sprinted home from school, pigtails bouncing, satchel rattling, cheeks burning. Taking the stairs to my flat two at a time, I was already forming the next sentence of my book. I knew I had to be disciplined about my work, as I only had a few days until the next Sunday episode, and I wanted to make sure I put down everything accurately, paying attention to detail, so my future readers were able to fully savour everything that The Odyssey had to offer.

As my book grew in volume, I was feeling increasingly smug about the whole thing, and complimented myself on my stroke of genius idea of turning a TV series into a book. My excitement was growing with every one of Odysseus’s new on-screen adventures. Initially, I planned to keep my book a secret until it was finished and ready for publication, but keeping secrets had never been my strong point, especially at seven years of age, so after a couple of weeks I was bursting at the seams with the thrill of it, and I told my best friend Ewa all about it.

After that Ewa became an everyday afterschool visitor to my house, whereby the two of us would go straight to my room, where we would stay silent for a couple of hours scribbling away together, and then she would leave. A few weeks into this book writing joint enterprise, I felt it was time to enlighten my parents to what was going on. I broke the book writing story to them over dinner sometime during week five. I told them how I was writing a book called The Odyssey, based on the TV series we all watched every week, and how I was trying to be as close to the series as possible, but that I was also thinking about adding some more adventures for Odysseus, and perhaps skipping some of the Penelope and the suitors’ story, as I thought that part rather dull and slow-paced. My parents listened politely and smiled, but their reaction was not as enthusiastic as I had imagined. In fact, I was pretty hurt by their lukewarm response to my sharing my life’s biggest boldest project with them. Nevertheless, now that my secret was out in the open, I talked to my parents of little else for the next couple of weeks, thinking that perhaps the idea might grow on them, given time and they would realise the enormity of its potential.

And then it all came crashing down. My dad sat me down on the scratchy yellow sofa in our tiny living room, and told me about Homer. The way he simply blurted it out, no preliminaries, no kids’ gloves in sight, man, it was brutal. By the time my dad had finished talking, I was broken, my book was reclaimed by some guy who had been dead for twenty-eight centuries, if he ever even existed.

The Odyssey notebook laid abandoned at the bottom of my desk drawer until we moved house a couple of years later. It was irretrievably lost in the move.

It was to be another thirty years until I picked up writing again.

The Odyssey in IMAX, as Nolan intended

I was coming so late to this particular party I was beginning to feel I might as well skip it altogether. I am glad I didn’t.
For reasons that remain not entirely clear to me, the social media algorithm had been feeding me The Odyssey pre-release news, and later reviews in English and Polish for several months. I was gobbling them up in the way not dissimilar to how the gluttonous Odysseus’s men were stuffing their faces with whatever Circe had served them.

By the end of July I knew what every major film critic and every Facebook wanna be Homer expert thought about every actor, every special effect, every costume and every omission from the original text.

I made a concerted effort to keep an open mind and it paid off. I loved it.

I did have a decades old personal relationship with The Odyssey, ever since I first saw the TV series version of it in the early 1970s and had a genius idea to write a book based on the TV show. But anyway.

In no particular order, here goes.

The Story.

I was captivated by each part of it and how it unfolded. From the first adventure in the Cyclops’ cave to the stringing of the bow towards the end, I was frequently clutching the arm rests of my chair and sliding lower in my seat as the tense scenes played out. I allowed myself to be transported into this world of myths and magic and to get fully ‘invested’ (I hate this phrase). Chopping the timeline and revisiting a few scenes worked well for me. I often repeat myself when telling a story, so I had not issues seeing The Horse stuck in the sand more than once.

The film was 2 hours and 52 minutes long. I was not tempted to check the watch once. In fact, I wished it carried on a little longer. Unlike Christopher Nolan’s previous creation, Oppenheimer, 3 hours exactly, which felt torturously long.

Matt Damon as Odysseus.

He was great. Deeply human, flawed, commanding, strong, angry, but also tender and vulnerable when he needed to be. His beard deserves a special mention, as it was his own throughout and it kept up with the choppy timeline, switching between short and black and long and grey, giving us heads up which point in the story we were at all times.

The Horse.

Beautiful departure from the more traditional version of it which used to place it on a square base with wheels. This one was bolting out of the sands outside Troy in the way that reminded me of the Statue of Liberty buried in the sand in the original Planet of the Apes.

It is possible that I have watched too many movies.

Tom Holland as Telemachus.

I loved what he did with the character. I had read opinions that he was too immature an actor to carry the role. I disagree; he was a young actor playing a young immature man, thrown into an overwhelming situation and he discharged the task perfectly. Am I biased? Perhaps. I am a big fan.

Anne Hathaway as Penelope.

The weakest link for me. That does not mean she was bad, but she could have been better or perhaps she was slightly miscast or, I don’t know, she was just less perfect than this character could have been.

Zendaya as Athena.

I wanted to see more of her, I wanted to see her assume various human and animal forms, as per the original story, I wanted her to say more, to guide Odysseus and Telemachus more. It was not to be. Oh, well.

The scene in which it looked like the bloodthirsty soldiers were about to kill her and then they decapitated her statue and her stone head rolled down the floor was one of my favourite images of the movie.

Robert Pattison as Antinous (chief suitor).

He deserved all the praise the majority of reviews bestowed on him. He was devious, cruel, repeatedly sending the chills down the many spines in the audience. He was also charming with a perfectly pitched deceitful smile and the face reflecting his cold calculated nastiness.

Samantha Morton as Circe.

She left me somewhat underwhelmed. Some reviews hinted at Oscar potential, I say she was okay, but not fantastic and also I feel her character was robbed of a significantly bigger importance in the original Homer story. I guess it’s a director’s prerogative to choose what to show and what to cut out of the film, which was three hours long already. The story she was allowed to keep in the film, the turning of the men into pigs was done superbly. I was mesmerised from the moment the sailors’ eating manners slowly became foreboding.

The music. By Ludwig Göransson.

Beautifully complemented the story, ominous, powerful, always there, a

ways hitting just the right tone. I am largely musically illiterate, and hardly notice the music in some movies, but this time I did, and I savoured it.

Elliott Page as Sinon.

Might have been confusing to Homer purists, as his character did not appear in the original Odyssey but only centuries later in Virgil’s The Aeneid, but his addition worked well and gave Odysseus another chance to reflect on the cruelty of war.

Himesh Patel as Eurylochus.

He was a long way from Albert Square.

I loved his portrayal of Odysseus’s second in command, as somebody who often tried to temper his boss’s anger and pride with a little common sense. I knew he had to die but was hoping that maybe he won’t, he was such a likeable wise man.

Zeus’ Law.

This was mentioned so many times by so many characters it began to feel like an educational podcast on what it was and how important it was to the Greeks.

Charlize Theron as Calypso.

Lovely as always. Gorgeous and slender. Tender too. She made it totally understandable how Odysseus was persuaded to be kept captive by her for 7 years. Lotus flowers or not.

The Sirens.

I wanted to see more of them. I wanted to hear them sing. Instead, we had the unsettling piece of eery music. Another ‘oh, well moment’.

One Tiny Criticism. The very tiny raft.

The raft that Odysseus had built on Calypso island in a distinctively lackadaisical fashion was laughably inadequate to take him on the last leg of his journey. It was almost as if he didn’t care if it fell apart. Tom Hanks could teach him a lesson or two on how to construct a successful desert island getaway vessel.

And Finally.

A lot of people had got hot under the collar about the casting of a black actress, Lupita Nyong’o, as both Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra. Lupita is on screen for less than 10 minutes. It’s a little more than a cameo. Although Helen of Troy is crucial to the story of the Trojan War, she is not terribly relevant to this story. The passionate online debate about this particular casting decision seemed totally over the top.
Lupita was not the only non-white actor in the film, but she was the only one who had attracted racist abuse, as suddenly all the Homer experts became well-versed in the original text and questioned whether this face would indeed have been successful in launching a thousand ships. Her husband commented to visiting Telemachus in the film that perhaps now she could only launch five hundred ships, before Helen slowly turned towards us to reveal half of her face horribly scarred in the aftermath of the war. She still looked gorgeous though, she was still Lupita Nyong’o.

Yoga Retreat at Pink Palace, Corfu

What was I thinking?!

After two solo holidays last year, which proved to me beyond any lingering doubt that solo holidaying was not for me, this year I stepped into the definition of madness for the third time and googled ‘solo yoga retreat for 50+ women’.

Faced with the vagaries of a woman’s brain, logic recoils and assumes a foetal position.

A myriad of options jumped out at me from my computer screen, gyrating in front of my over-excited eyes, tempting me with asanas and realignment, finding purpose, intentions, and meditation.

The choices were seemingly endless, the locations included all the usual suspects; the Greek islands, Bali, Thailand, and Tenerife. I spent several hours weighing up the options, the cuisine, and the amount of mindfulness jargon I was prepared to endure. I settled on the Pink Palace Yoga Retreat in Corfu as my top favourite.

I pencilled in some provisional dates for the last week of May.

And then I remembered that my youngest daughter was coming home from university for the summer sometime in the last week of May.

I messaged her and asked her if she knew when she was likely to be back, as I was planning to book a yoga retreat.

She responded enthusiastically that she would love to come to a yoga retreat with me and that she was available any time after the 20th. She thanked me for thinking of her and repeated that it would be a brilliant way for her to wind down after her exam season.

I couldn’t possibly tell her I was only asking for her return date, because I did not want to be in Corfu when she came back to London, as I had not seen her for a couple of months and was missing her badly.

Anyway, to cut this rather long introduction short, here we were, together, at the very pink Pink Palace at Argios Gordios.

We left London in the morning, and I cannot begin to put into words how absolutely awful it would have been for me to arrive here solo, as originally planned.

The EasyJet flight ritual took most of the day and we landed in Corfu after 6pm. The Pink Palace shuttle bus picked us up from the airport and we arrived at our hotel just in time for dinner. I looked around the room, full of fellow yoga retreaters. Had I stuck to my original plan, I would have been sitting there alone and miserable, help myself to a large plate of salads and meats, avoiding eye contact and conversation with strangers.

What on earth was I thinking.

Whatever it was, I narrowly avoided the agony of an awkward solo week by the gorgeous Ionian Sea, for which I was thanking my lucky stars. And my daughter.

Stuffed to our eyeballs with food, we retired to our room, just in time to catch the last shades of pink post-sunset sky, before they faded into the navy-blue darkness.

The next day, it was down to the 8am first yoga session on a roof by the beach.

We Ommmed and we Shantied, we stretched and balanced and massaged our internal organs, we were mountains, triangles, eagles, and cobras. I failed to cradle my bended leg to my bosom like a baby, but that’s okay, because, as one of our newly met classmates commented afterwards, it’s not about touching your toes, it’s about touching your soul, which would have been pure cringe, had she not said it in a self-mocking way, so that was fine. I have adopted this as my personal yoga motto for the week.

An hour and a half session, or as it’s referred to in the asana business, practice, was relaxing and challenging in equal parts. The next session at 6pm framed the day perfectly.

Day two. This morning yoga was mostly challenging with a small addition of relaxing at the end.

What was I thinking?

Why on earth did I think 3 hours of yoga a day was a good idea for somebody who does 3 hours of exercise a week in a good month.

Day three.

We played truant, and skipped our 6pm yoga session. It felt like I was back at school and had done something moderately naughty for which my teacher was going to give me a disapproving look the next day.

We split the day between the pool and the beach, with a break for a mandatory Greek salad and chicken gyros for lunch.

During my week-long Corfu Yoga retreat I learned a lot about yoga.

I learned that my favourite yoga pose was called savasana, the corpse pose. It was the final pose at each practice, and I was looking forward to it from the first cross-legged Omm. The corpse pose did exactly what it said on the tin. We lied down very still on our backs, eyes closed and we did not move a muscle, playing dead. The only sounds were the waves splashing against the beach below and a chatter of birds above. Bliss!

The teacher encouraged us to ‘relax your body, relax your mind’. I had mastered the former within seconds, but the relaxing of the mind might need to wait until I reach a real corpse stage of my life.

I learned that my second favourite yoga pose was called balasana, a child’s pose, the curled up in a ball version, head down on the mat, eyes closed. Beautiful. The only thing was, the teacher always asked us to unfold from it much sooner than I was ready to.

Most importantly, I learned, or was reminded, that there was the whole wide and beautiful world out there, and that I want to see as much of it as possible, and I cannot wait to start. So for my next trip…

Inter Alia at Wyndham’s Theatre

Last night I had Rosamund Pike’s stunning beauty, endless energy and confident stage presence all to myself for 1 hour 40 minutes, no break, at Wyndham’s Theatre.

The experience left me drained and exhausted. I can’t remember breathing or blinking much during the whole show to make sure I did not miss a single word, a gesture, or a grimace.

The play starts with Rosamund’s character Jessica Parks doing her job as a crown court judge. A treat for anybody involved in a legal profession in the UK, I count myself among that crowd.

And then it gets real, it gets lyrical and it gets comedic, it gets mundane, and everyday, and it gets marital and suffocatingly motherly, whilst Rosamund Jessica keeps talking, and talking and talking, explosively, passionately, relentlessly, whilst at the same time setting the table, running around the playground, getting changed for a dinner party, washing up, having sex with a guitar, no not really, just a clever use of a guitar neck whilst faking an orgasm.

This carried on for a while, and it had already tired me out somewhat, even though it seemed to be going nowhere in particular, and then the OMG moment dawned on me, the Oh My God, he…, realisation crept up upon me, I thought momentarily, was I the last one in the audience to have caught on to this? No matter, I got there, and then I watched the inevitable unravelling of it all, and it was ever so sad and powerful and I wish it had gone on for longer, but there was nothing left to go on, so the lights went out.

Jessica was flanked by her husband and son. Initially, the two men felt no more than living props, moving quietly around her, but as the plot progressed, they came into their own.

Cormac McAlinden who plays Jessica’s son Harry, is a name to watch. His take on goofy teenager sleepwalking around the kitchen was brilliant throughout, and when it all fell apart, his final outburst of a monologue was truly disturbing.

I’d say, if you have a spare evening between now and the end of this run sometime in June, go see it.

Tunisia March 2026

Last week we stayed at Belisaire and Thalasso hotel at Yasmine Hammamet in Tunisia. Very last-minute decision, all inclusive, second time with loveholidays.

Me and my two daughters. We were collectively referred to as the three girls wherever we go, which was fine by me.

Iran war and everything else that was wrong with the world seemed many more thousands of miles away than it actually was.

Having no Internet data outside the hotel helped, as we were blissfully cut off from world news for several hours each day.

Tunisia in the first week of March is not yet sunny and summery. It is a light jumper weather with occasional hot sun moments, when it becomes tshirt weather for a couple of hours.

Our hotel was at the south end of Yasmine Hammamet beach with Hammamet marina around one hour walk away.

Not wasting any time, we headed to the marina in the afternoon on the day of our arrival.

The area was utterly deserted. Long stretches along the marina felt untouched by human hand for a very long time. We followed paved paths through empty recreation grounds and olive trees, wooden arches, and palm trees, without seeing a living soul. We could not tell whether these places were permanently abandoned or whether they would miraculously come back to live in a month’s time or so, when the summer season kicks in. We enjoyed the eerie tranquillity of the place, but I can understand why it might not be every sun-seeker’s idea of holiday fun.

During the week-long holiday we went on three day trips, interspaced with three days at the hotel, where we lapped up every drop of the all-inclusiveness; the indoor heated swimming pool, a yoga class on the lawn, the gym, and the steam room, the all day cappuccinos, countless watered down pina coladas and limitless blue lagoons.

Our first trip was to Hammamet town centre. We took a public transport bus. Return ticket was 40p per person. The journey took half an hour. No Internet, so relying on the kindness of fellow passengers to tell us where to get off. Centre ville? Prochain arret. C’est ici. Merci bien.

The streets were busy with local people going about their business, and mangy cats who had seen better days. Or maybe not.

We headed towards Kasbah, the Fort, first. We paid a small entry fee and stepped into the soothingly peaceful courtyard with a few sprawling trees in the middle.

The view over the city from the Kasbah rooftop is a must.

Some blogs mention a rooftop cafe but it was closed. The chairs and tables were there, but no coffee. We were there still very much out of season and in the middle of Ramadan.

We bought some early souvenirs, the ubiquitous Tunisian mosaics, and allowed ourselves to get lost along narrow winding streets of the medina.

We walked along the beach front, which backs onto a cemetery, found an open cafe in the centre of town, had delicious £1 cappuccinos, did not find an open bank, as we learnt that banks closed at 12.45pm during Ramadan, did not manage to change money anywhere else, as we did not bring our passports with us, and the ATM told us in French and English that it was closed and would re-open later. Getting hold of money was simply not to be, so we chilled moneyless on a bench by the bay, took hundreds of photos of sleeping cats and headed back to the bus stop.

We got back to the hotel in perfect time for pre-dinner cocktails by the pool.

Days out do not get much more budget-friendly than this.

The second trip was to Tunis, Carthage and Sidi Bou Said.

This one was organised by our loveholidays rep.

We were picked up by the coach at 8am, and promptly greeted by Mohammed our guide.

Mohammed talked non-stop for three quarters of the day, switching between English, French, German, and Arabic mid-sentence to keep us on our toes.

First stop was Tunis town centre. We were dropped off by a Catholic Cathedral of Tunis, a surprisingly imposing building for a country with 99% Muslim population.

We walked to the medina, where Mohammed led us to an oil-based perfume factory for an inevitable sales pitch, but compared to other similar experiences, it was relatively short and sweet, with no pressure to buy anything.

After that we had about an hour and a half free time. The three of us strolled around the medina without a particular plan or purpose, we stumbled across the Town Hall, were invited to the roof of a carpet shop, which offered an amazing view of the city, and browsed through many market stalls.

From Tunis we went to Carthage, a half hour drive through the suburbs. The pull of this place was the deciding factor in booking Tunisia and getting up at 4am last Sunday to catch an early morning flight to Enfidha.

Carthage archaeological site is positioned very next door to the Presidential Palace. This meant, bizarrely, that we were told by an armed guard to turn back from one path within the site, and to find another way around it. I guess, when in Tunisia, do as a Tunisian soldier tells you.

Ancient Carthage today is a pale shadow of its past glory. Still, it is Carthage, it had to be seen, it was the reason we signed up for this trip and here we were.

The best-preserved part on the site are the Antonine Baths. They are pretty impressive. We were not allowed to walk among the ruins, but could only view them and snap happy from behind a barrier.

The third stop on our itinerary was Sidi Bou Said, the picture-perfect white and blue village commonly referred to as the Tunisian Santorini. It was definitely photogenic. It was also quite small and insanely overpriced. We walked to the top of it, took the pictures overlooking the marina, we resisted a London priced coffee, grateful to our guide for advising us to ask the prices of everything before ordering food and drink.

After that it was time to drive home. The guide mercifully gave up on his trilingual narrative and we enjoyed the views in peace.

We got back to our hotel at 5pm, just in time for, yes, you’ve guessed it, a round of pre-dinner drinks.

Our third and last trip was by a private taxi to Kairouan great mosque, El Jem coliseum and Sousse town and marina.

The trip was pre-arranged for us by the loveholidays rep.

We were picked up at 8am from our hotel and headed to Kairouan mosque. We were loaned headscarves to enter the courtyard of the mosque. Kairouan mosque is one of the most important in the world. One source I looked up said that 7 pilgrimages to Kairouan equals one to Mecca. I cannot vouch for the veracity of that piece of information, but the mosque was certainly impressive. It was peaceful and almost empty except for a couple of Muslim women reciting Koran under the arches.

Certainly worth a visit, especially if you are a holiday culture junkie like us.

After Kairouan we were off to El Jem.

El Jem was easily the top site we visited in Tunisia. A true gem, to use the cliche. Personal opinion of course.

The structure was huge, multilayered, multistorey, and just wow at every step.

The weather was perfect for visiting a sandy coloured stone building too. The sun seeping through endless arches and curves made the strolling though it dreamy and magical.

El Jem featured in the 2000 Russell Crowe Gladiator movie during his initial North African sparrings.

Unlike Carthage, where access inside the ruins was restricted, we were allowed to walk everywhere among El Jem’s giant five storey structures, as well as climb and touch every stone.

Once more, we had the site nearly exclusively to ourselves, which make us feel like true explorers, rather than all-inclusive day-trippers in a taxi.

Our last stop of the day was Sousse, a sprawling beach holiday resort on our way back to Hammamet.

We drove through a long stretch of hotels, each looking exactly like the one before it.

Our first brief stop was at the Sousse medina, we were on a mission to find one more mosaic, a perfect cat one, which had proved elusive to us so far, in Hammamet, Tunis, Carthage, Kairouan and El Jem. As this was our last stop on the last day trip, the quest had become a serious matter.

Things did not look at all promising to start with, as we seemed to have entered a local footwear and kitchenware market, which was fascinating to see, but there was not a souvenir shop in sight. We must have looked lost and confused when a local man came to our rescue. He introduced himself as Mohammed the local chief of police, and to make his claim sound more legitimate, he rummaged in his pockets and flicked a photo ID card of sorts in front of us. It was most likely his driving licence, but played along. ‘The chief of police’ informed us that there were six government souvenir shops in the whole of Sousse medina and he was going to show us all six. It took some serious assertiveness for him to agree that we were only interested in the mosaics shop. He led us to it, and there, miraculously, a prefect cat mosaic materialised in front of our eyes, to the delight of the biggest cat lover among us, and the shop owner who could see clear the Euro signs in my daughter’s big smile.

The shopping done, we parted ways with Mohammed and went back to our taxi. We finished off the day at the Sousse marina, a tranquil place with a lot of boats and a few cafes. Just what we needed.

So this was it. Tunisia done. We have seen the main tourist attractions, in a leisurely out of season fashion. We walked miles along white sandy beaches, often the only people there save for local fishermen. We went during Ramadan, which could have been a problem if we tried to eat at local restaurants, as most of them were closed during fasting hours.

What else.

We felt safe everywhere we went.

Tunisian people were friendly, helpful, and welcoming. Those who wanted to sell us things, were less pushy and insistent than in other countries known for their haggling sales techniques.

And finally.

Tunisia felt ever so slightly like Morocco and Egypt’s poor cousin, which is probably unfair, it is just that the other two North African destinations have so much to offer.

A lot of Tunisian roadside fields and villages that we drove past were drowning in litter, mainly plastic containers, and other debris. We also passed thousands of half-finished houses, and scaffoldings, which did not help the overall impression. As my daughter put it, Tunisia could do with a face-lift. I suspect the problem is, it might ill afford one.

It was the opportunity to visit the once mighty Carthage that decided it for us, and I am glad we saw it, but if I am totally honest, I personally found it a little bit underwhelming. There, I said it.

Still, we really enjoyed the holiday. It is so very true what they say, whoever they are, it’s not where you go, it’s who you go with that matters.

Winter Olympics 2026

My daughter is working a skiing season at a well-known skiing resort somewhere in the French Alps, and I am missing her badly, so I had this genius idea that watching Winter Olympics might make me feel closer to her. I decided to give it a proper go on the weekend.

What can I say. Winter sports have moved on since I last paid attention.

I blinked and technology had elbowed in on everything in the world of snow and ice sports. To be fair, it was a long blink. Last time I watched Winter Olympics, Eddie the Eagle was chasing his dreams in Calgary. Eddie who? Exactly. Life had taken over and I never had much interest or reason to get into watching winter sports. Until now.

I had a lot of catching up to do, so I had spent most of Saturday flicking between BBC2 and iPlayer to get most of the coverage, in the hope of becoming a sofa expert by the end of the evening. It wasn’t to be, so just a few amateur comments from me.

For the life of me I could not work out curling
It’s like cricket on ice. Incomprehensible. Except not really like cricket at all.

Snowboarding was not an Olympic sport last time I looked, so I could be excused for being confused by the names of disciplines.

Men’s big air? Could be a euphemism for a fart for all I knew. Instead, it turned out to be screwdriver spins in the air whilst, for extra points, holding onto your snowboard.

I must admit it was not easy to work out who was who in those high-tech Star Trek like mirror visors and baggy outfits. Took me a while to work out whether I was watching men’s or women’s competition. Turned out to be men’s.

I enjoyed that. Nerve-wracking, spectacular, defying physics and common sense, and cheating gravity for longer than I thought possible. Fearless and unreal. From the corner of my cosy sofa it looked like the risk of life-changing injuries was a split second away each time they launched themselves into the air.

Dancing on ice next.I was pleased to see not much had changed here. In fact, dare I whisper it, it was a little bit boring. The music was very slow and tame. Give me Torvill and Dean’s Bolero any day.

Women’s ski jump?? Since when? My first reaction, as one of my husband’s favourite saying goes, it’s not proper. Let’s see if it grows on me.

I remember watching men’s ski jumping competitions back in Poland, where it holds a joint first place with football and volleyball as a national sport, with lots of medals of all shades to boast each year. But women? Equal rights I guess.

Women’s Ice hockey. Naah. Sorry, Canada, sorry USA, not for me. Perfect time for a tea break. And this time it’s not the women, it’s the hockey.

Sunday morning. Women’s downhill.
Now we’re talking!

Beautiful, powerful, awesome, elegant, out of this world fearless; the speed, the jumps, the turns, loved Federica Brignone’s tiger helmet.

112km per hour? As I only ever experienced that kind of speed inside an airplane, I could not relate. The ice cold, crisp and fizzy atmosphere on the slopes of Cortina made me think about an ice cold, crisp and fizzy g&t, the type that only get served on airplanes, but I understand that could be too huge a stretch of imagination for anybody to appreciate.

Breezy Johnson. What a name for the person who ended up a downhill gold Olympic medallist. I really wanted it to be her real name, but a quick Google revealed that it is in fact Breanna. Oh, well.

Luge.
Not exactly a spectator sport, is it? Or am I missing something?

I just heard that somebody was currently three and a half tens of a second behind somebody else. I mean, seriously, how could this be seen as a decisive victory? I cannot even imagine three and a half tens of a second.

Sunday night. Women’s big air qualifying run.

They are all so cool, so so very cool. The fist bumps before they start, the twirls, the spins, the grabs, the flips, the smiles, the energy, the youth. Magical.

Figure skating. Last event on Sunday night.

What happened to the perfect 6 scores? The waiting for the judges’ scores for technical merit and presentation used to be the best part for me. The dramatic suspense, the collective holding of breath as the scores were revealed on screen.

This seems to have been replaced by one total score, displayed the moment a skater finishes their performance, so no waiting, no suspense. A bit of a letdown if you ask me.

The skating itself was glorious.

Hamnet film review

The only thing I knew about Hamnet before I went to see it was that a child named Hamnet dies in it, and that it is based on the life of William Shakespeare via the book called Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. A couple of weeks before I went to see it, Jessie Buckley started scooping every seasonal film award going for her role in it, which piqued my interest.

Buckley plays Agnes, which is the name Anne Hathaway goes by in the film. Paul Mescal plays Shakespeare. I am surprised Mescal has not won any awards for his portrayal (yet) because his Shakespeare, with his stuttering writer’s block moments, his pensive contemplation, his vulnerability, and more, is a delight to watch.

I did not expect to be punched in the stomach so hard, so repeatedly, with so much force! I did not expect something so beautiful, so wow, so oh my god. So clever, so pleasing on so many levels, so all coming together so heart-meltingly in the end.

It begins slowly and unfolds steadily. The forest landscape is painted with care, and the misty rolling fields set the right tone. The hawk and the glove motifs might feel cliched to start with, but, but they make sense later on.

What we get in Hamnet is a Hamlet backstory, as imagined by Maggie O’Farrell and presented perfectly on screen by everybody involved.

A tearjerker, an emotional rollercoaster, a feast for the eyes, Jessie Buckley is gorgeous in it, Paul Mescal is ever so good, the Hamnet actor Jacobi Jupe is pulling at the heartstrings with all the ruthlessness an innocent child can convey.

When the final section of the film begins, with Hamlet on stage at the Globe, or is it the Rose, and suddenly it all comes together, and it takes your breath away, well, my breath away anyway, and it’s one of those brief intense moments when we feel alive, when it’s all worth it, when the spoken word reaches out to us through the centuries, all the way to the Everyman sofa in Crystal Palace, when to be or not to be loses its tired overuse, and I feel like joining Agnes when she physically reaches out and touches the hand of Hamlet on stage.

The theme of Shakespeare’s play on stage within a film about Shakespeare has been done before, probably most famously in recent years in Shakespeare in Love, possibly the only time Gwyneth Paltrow fully delivered the goods. Now Shakespeare in Love has a serious competition in Hamnet.

Shakespeare the dad comes painfully alive and everything in the Danish Play suddenly fits the film’s idea of how it came to be. It is of course only an idea, a version of Shakespeare’s creative universe which in all probability was not true, but it fits, it fits! Which is why I left the cinema believing that it could have been conceived and written the way I had just watched, as an expression of father’s grief and the way of saying goodbye to his son, something he could not do in person, as he had arrived home too late.

I tried to upload a close-up from the film, but my WordPress editing tool told me I was not allowed to, probably something to do with copyright policing. So I am uploading a couple of photos showing the comfort and the luxury of Everyman, Crystal Palace.

Croydon Airport Visitor Centre

Oops, I did it again. At Croydon Airport Visitor Centre

Madness is booking myself on another guided tour at another obscure London tourist attraction, run by retired volunteers and expect not to be bored to within an inch of my life.

Still, this is exactly what I did, when, after last month’s Crossness Pumping Station experience, I thought that a good way to spend the first Sunday of 2026 was to book a fun family day out at the Croydon Airport Visitor Centre in Purley Way.

To be fair, Croydon Airport did pop up in an after dinner conversation a couple of days before, and somebody did show more than a fleeting interest in the topic, although I will never know whether it was genuine, or because he is a perfectly well-mannered polite person, but anyway. I did look it up and Google said it was only open to visitors once a month on the first Sunday of each month, and it also said the tour would take about 45 minutes, and it sounded reasonable and it was only 20 minutes drive and we had no other plans, so we went.

Croydon Airport has the potential of making Croydonians proud of their history. As you are not likely to hear, ‘I am from Croydon and proud’, many times in your lifetime, this is not something to be sneezed at.

Croydon Airport boasts the world’s first air control tower, and it claims its place in history as London’s first commercial flights airport.

The airport was operational on its current Purley Way site between 1928 and 1959, when its conceded defeat to Heathrow. Apparently something to do with grassy fields around Croydon which did not make good runways, as opposed to concrete runways at Heathrow. The last airplane to take off from Croydon flew to Rotterdam. Yes, I did listen to some of it.

The place is interesting, the nostalgic spirit of yesteryear air travel becomes a palpable reality in the many rooms we went through.

Dress code rules for air travel were intriguing, the fact that the passengers were being weighed in before the flight was amusing. I was happy to learn about Amy Johnson’s solo flights and that it took 19 days to fly to Australia.

I am glad I saw it, but, My Dear Newly Born Baby Jesus, the tour did not half drag on!

Two hours! Two hours of technical detail after technical detail, information on propellers, re-fuelling, runway rules, history of airline name changes, as well as going over each map and diagram on each wall, the whole shebang.

My daughter and I would have been happy to see the artefacts, read the signs and notices, or not, and be out and inside Costa Coffee across the road within the promised 45 minutes.

Unfortunately, sneaking out early was not really an option, as the air control tower, arguably the most exciting part of the tour, was left to the end.

When it was all over, I was ready to apologise to my companions for the length of the tour, but curiously, the men in our group claimed they had found it fascinating and not at all too long. They must be the most well-mannered, most polite men in Croydon.

1st of January. Happy Birthday to all Afghans in the UK

Afghan refugees in the UK celebrate their birthdays on the 1st of January. This is the date of birth the Home Office assigns to them on arrival in the country.

My understanding about the reasons why is that the exact date of birth is not something Afghans attach much importance to.

This is especially true of remote rural areas of Afghanistan, where keeping paper records is not high on the agenda.

Unaccompanied child asylum seekers who arrive in the UK usually know what age they are, as this is the information their parents are likely to have given them, but they do not know the day or the month they were born. The 1st of January is given to them as a simplified, easy to remember practical date.

As a result of this, a lot of Afghans in the UK send Happy Birthday to All of Us messages on the first day of the year.

This gives our family a great reason to end the Christmas season with a veritable feast at Watan restaurant in Tooting every year.

It grants us one extra day before the New Year’s resolutions kick in, because there is no point in starting the New Year New Abs health drive hours before consuming Watan Family Special Mixed Grill.

After that, there really is nowhere to hide, and the resumption of real life looms big on the horizon.

Off to the gym now.