Boiled Eggs #6
What I did and thought about from the 15th-17th July 2026
15th July
Flat white and pastry and Greek yoghurt from Marvin’s for breakfast. Played with Pie in the pool and had an extended water pistol fight. SB carried her around on his shoulders while she poured water from a watering can that was also a duck wearing headphones and shouted ‘nobody shoot my taxi!’ OtBot was being very wholesome this whole time smiling and plucking flowers from bushes like a tiny Princess Diana. Cleaner pointed at her yesterday and said ‘look at that beautiful baby!’
Enjoying No Country for Old Men. Another book where women exist to represent a vague idea of goodness/domesticity/the ‘good’ life. It’s very much a novel about men which is obviously fine but can’t help but wonder if he as a person was able to see women clearly. It’s flattening – good wives and mothers or bad whores – and so boring to talk/think about because it’s already been covered a million times. Also makes me feel guilty in my own life when I play into the stereotype and do traditionally ‘female’ eg. enjoy cooking or wait impatiently for M to get home from the pub. In those moments I’m like omg they were right about us.
Late lunch by the beach with delicious suncreamy pina coladas. I feel lucky that M likes to read through meals. Is it prejudiced that I wouldn’t want to go out with someone who didn’t like novels? Too full for ice cream and also sunburnt. Mum and Dad fuming about wordle word (PSHAW) but I defend it because I got it weirdly quickly.
My earring fell out at dinner and Pie found it on the floor with her torch then woman in the bathroom helped me screw it back in when it was too fiddly to do myself. Felt like the Margot Robbie in Barbie meme when she’s clasping her hands together and smiling about the power of female solidarity.
Man in restaurant watching football on his phone propped up against a salt or pepper shaker while partner fed crying child. Dad said it was fine because it was a big game (England Argentina world cup semi-finals) but not ok to do otherwise.
Sunburnt woman from Lanark heard our accents and engaged Mum in conversation. Mum quick to point out she is Welsh not Scottish which is an important distinction though both cultures are similarly sheep-oriented. Mum told woman M and I lived in the south side of Glasgow and she said ‘of course you do’ which haunted M bc he couldn’t figure out what it meant.
16th July
Beach day. Water sparkling green, blue, turquoise. Swam and had a beer at the sunbeds. Pie orchestrated a game of pretending to fall asleep and G had to be a spider crawling up her arm. Pie would ‘wake up’ at intervals and shout ‘spider!’ G has endless patience for this kind of malarky.
M and I went to look around Methoni Castle, a thirteenth century Venetian structure (had to look that up even though M told me at the time). Imagined transporting one of the people who worked on its construction to the present day and being like, ‘look, it’s still here! I just paid five euros to look around something you built eight hundred years ago!’ Met a Canadian woman who said she wished she could bring her children to Greece every year but it’s so expensive. Felt lucky!!!
17th July
Relishing waking up in the pitch dark, cool room with nothing to do and no guilt. At home of course minimal things to do but maximum guilt always. Hard to write what I’m up to because days have no shape here and I meander from one thing to the next guided by my whims aka what I want to eat.
Did Pie’s sticker book with her by the pool She was sweet and careful with every sticker, saying ‘that’s ok’ to herself and me when we couldn’t line things up perfectly. My favourite scene was the Russian Princess, but she liked Japanese Garden.
Pie loves the digital camera I gave her and keeps asking everyone to do the peace sign in photos. We can’t figure out where she discovered the gesture, G thought it was my doing but now she thinks potentially a Trollz sticker. Pie asked me what’s the point in having boobies if I don’t have a baby and I was like….. I don’t actually know.
Cleaner disappointed but not surprised by M and I’s sunburn. Her face said she’d seen it a thousand times before. Looked at my arm and said ‘you’re…’ searching for the word and I said ‘pale?’ and she nodded emphatically.
Pie fell on the evening walk into town and cried so I carried her and sung her a song M made up about Ted and Pinky. Lyrics are ‘blobby one and blobby two, what will we blobby do with you’ and she loved it, so I took credit for the composition. We are all possessive over the babies affection/attention except M who can take it or leave it. As a result both babies obviously obsessed with M in the same way a cat always wants to lie on someone who is allergic to cats. OtBot can even say Bobo (Pie’s nickname for M) though when I ask her to say my name she still says ‘meh’ most of the time.
Everyone on great form at dinner. Waitress thought SB had ordered three alcoholic drinks and teased him for it. SB mortified and blushing. Pie became enchanted by a hat on display in a shop over the road (hard to explain but the hat was a pink bunny with ears that moved when you squeezed the legs which were actually two pumps full of air) so Mum took her to get it midway through dinner. When Pie returned to the restaurant wearing the hat every child in the place stared in open mouthed wonder. Cue everyone trying on the hat and general hilarity and lots of pictures on Pie’s digital camera. After dinner we saw one of the families from the restaurant in the shop wearily buying all three of their own children the hats. We were in the shop because Mum was buying OtBot a yellow version that looked like a Pikachu. It was like Pie was an influencer. The shopkeeper was laughing a lot - laughing all way to the bank probably.
Discovered Marvin’s sells novelty condoms that say things like ‘best lover in Gialova’ and weirdly ‘100% authentic gyros.’ Don’t even know what that’s trying to imply. It’s like the tardis in there – we also found impressive selection of British and American novels and cute foil-lined patterned lunchboxes.
