​​“It's what your father calls a sun-downer”

​ Sabaudia​

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​​​​So, my uncle has a place in Sabaudia which is about an hour South of Rome, and across the road from the beach. I hadn’t visited for what must be close to 25 years, but it all looked much the same, even down to the millions of ants trailing from one place to the next (including all over Milo – they seem to be enjoying the rust from one of the headlights, and some old Dime bars in the boot).

It was lovely to just chill out on the beach for a day or 2 – naturally the stress of being on holiday for the last 2 months has really taken its toll on us both. I must admit, it’s been a while since I’ve been on a beach and I’m glad to see there’s been a little bit of an upgrade. For 1, the sun-loungers now have some kind of cool visor thing at the end – to be angled at will, to ensure you have a proper white strip from the bottom of the neck up. Secondly, the beach towels now have ‘pockets’ that dangle off the side of the loungers, to place phones, cameras, wallets, etc. From what I can gather, this seems to make life much easier for thieves, by saving them having to dig around in rucksacks or under towels like they must have had to have done in the past. One thing that I was disappointed to see hadn’t been upgraded, was the guy coming round getting money to rent the sun loungers. From what I could tell, it seemed very optional, or the slipping of some odd notes here and there, and nothing more was said. If I had my way, there’d be bar codes on the loungers, scanners, ipads with a virtual beach mapped out, and so on. Well, I guess another idea I will in no way action upon… (you read it here first if it does get actioned. If it already exists then I swear I never knew about it)

Naturally, we both got sunburnt in the strangest of places on the first day. And rather randomly both in the same bottom left of our stomachs – the sun really was being very specific with which part of the beach it was directing itself.

Paul (my uncle) was the perfect host, and on the stroke of 7pm each night there was a glass of wine thrust into our hands, and a table full of food a short time thereafter (disturbed on more than one occasion by a pair of rather ‘inappropriately’ behaved dogs – and they were related). Meg even got the opportunity to throw some food around the kitchen, and crack eggs over her shoes, on one evening – all in prep for her cooking school, when she can really get stuck into rolling pasta and flambéing and whatever else one gets taught in cooking school.