July 24th 2010
Those who don’t know any better think that this means donning sunglasses and a Liz Hurley bikini and carving a bit of space out for yourself on a Riviera beach in August, while wrinkled brown bodies step over you and kick up sand in your face and into your warm and fly- infested 15 euro mojito .
Those who do know better, take a Five Star Greece villa, pieds dans l’eau, on the water on a Greek island. On a hot still night in an empty black bay with stars above, the gentle gurgle of water rippling on pebbles and frogs shrilling from the olive trees, those of you who do know better dive into a smooth and velvety sea with not a ripple on it. On nights like this, when you swim, the real stars come out – myriads of sparkling phosphorescent plankton fill the water, sparking up with every movelment you make; clouds of stars stream between your fingers, encase your limbs with a halo of light, fly in plumes around you as you swim, and light up the water around you with an unearthly green glow. Floating in this warm and starry water, looking up at the warm and starry sky, you lose all sense of whether you are floating in space, or in water, flying, swimming, or dreaming. Only one thing is clear; Saint Tropez is a very, very long way away.
p.s. to this nocturnal blog ; I received an email from a travel colleague in Burma announcing that the office would be closed to celebrate the Full Moon. What a good idea, I hope it catches on in the West.
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