Reading By The Pool

I had a bit of a love/hate relationship this week with a Nespresso machine. When entering a hotel room for the first time, I have my “I am entering a hotel room for the first time ritual”. I manoeuvre my suitcase to the corner where I am least likely to trip over it, I only hang up items made primarily from linen, I set my wash bag beside the sink. I don’t bother unpacking the rest. And I’m not sure what this says about me other than I am always ready to leave. Should I be troubled by a dangerous insect, or streets filled with revellers, or neighbours who party until dawn, or a smell of burning, or a noisy lift shaft, I can move on at a moment’s notice and do my entering a hotel room for the first time ritual all over again.

I also like to acquaint myself with the coffee-making facilities. I locate the plug down the back of the fridge, I fill the tank, I insert one of those little capsules, gold, navy, tartan, doesn’t matter, they all taste the same, press a button and I wait and I wait and I wait. Sometimes it takes four attempts before I hear that pod-piercing sound and watch the gradual trickle of hot liquid. What is produced is never anything other than disgusting but it’s reassuring to know I can travel anywhere in the world and still get the same yuck and, on the Algarve, what I got was definitely superior to what was served at breakfast which I had to brace myself to drink because the alternative was caffeine withdrawal, and I didn’t fancy that. Anyhow, I was not planning to write about Nespresso machines. It just so happens that this one had an interesting personality. Even though I told it to do small size, it kept producing and producing and producing and I had to rush to grab anything in the vicinity until I had filled two cups and two glasses, and I discovered that the only receptable left big enough to catch its flow was the toothbrush mug. I spent five days with this machine. But gradually we got to know each other, and I realised it had issues knowing when to stop. The trick was to give it the exact amount of water it needed and then it would perform to its full potential. And I’m not sure what the lesson here is other than lots of things perform better when they are understood.

On day three of my trip to an exclusive five-star resort in the southernmost region in mainland Portugal, where there were multiple weddings with lots of guests and lots of tattoos, I posted a mirror selfie on Instagram, and said I’m not really a sun person. I spent more time in the lift and at the spa and on the cross trainer and in the library with no windows and on a secret balcony on the second floor than I spent beside the pool. The pool was too communal, and I never quite felt I fitted in because I don’t own a sarong or a cardigan. And I had no idea what I was doing in a place with parasols because I like city breaks and walking tours and cathedrals and graffiti, not loungers and pina coladas and applying anyone else’s sunscreen but having done it three times now, I have come to terms with it, and I call it my annual reading holiday. And I should say I have nothing against tattoos. I like a discreet one here and there, but these were full-body and a bit like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I had deliberated at length over which books to bring on my reading holiday and I’d positioned them in my suitcase in order of preference - one cosy crime, one Irish, one family saga, one cosy crime, one Irish, and one about the demonisation of middle-aged woman which I planned to leave to last because I’d return to feminism on the flight home.

And on day two when I went to get a towel which I wasn’t sure what I was meant to do with, I discovered there was a selection of novels so you could grab a towel and a novel but there was only a Sally Rooney which I had already read and a Santa Montefiore who I’d never read but who is apparently “like a Sunday evening TV show, comforting and predictable with a scare in the middle but it all comes good in the end” and quite a few in Dutch which I reckoned had been left behind by golfers but they were digging up the golf course this year which was disappointing because it was brown instead of green. And when I went back the next day, I noticed that Sally Rooney was gone and that’s when I started investigating who round the pool was reading her. And that’s also when a pleasant kind of warmth came over me and a buoyant hope about the future of humanity when I saw how many people were holding up paperbacks to protect them from the rays rather than electronic devices. I decided you should never judge a person until you know what they are reading because a heavily-tattooed, inebriated person of the male species was studying Wellington which turned out to be a short but informative biography of Arthur Wellesley and the size six, chain-smoking, white-haired lady who had a morning, afternoon and evening pool outfit was the one reading Normal People. “Can you see what everyone’s reading?” I said to my travelling companions who between them were browsing their emails, Get Your Sh!t Together and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo which had unfortunately melted in the heat. All the pages were now in the wrong order, but I wasn’t sure that mattered. It was a great way to start conversations because the woman in the leopard-print swimsuit who was engrossed in a Danielle Steele had a husband who had had a heart bypass. He had to have a daily blood pressure check and was enjoying a Steve Cavanagh which had the strapline “never let MURDER get in the way of a good story”. And the beautiful girl in the tangerine bikini who was holidaying with her mother had done the Colleen Hoovers, starts and ends with us, and she’d picked up an Elizabeth Day and she always liked to bring some self-help and this time it was Good Vibes Good Life: How Self-Love Is The Key To Unlocking Your Greatness. And I noticed The Palace Papers, full of remarkable inside access to the Royal Family and The Last Dance, a Detective Miller case, and the first new Billingham series in twenty years and a couple, and she was reading A Court of Thorns and Roses which was the breath-taking first book in the global phenomenon TikTok sensation Acotar fantasy fiction collection and he was reading The Devil’s Advocate which was a best-selling advocacy manual. And I concluded he had arrived early for the conference that was starting once all the wedding guests had eventually departed and that you don’t need to have anything in common to have a successful marriage.

And at one point, I changed the order of my books and read the two Irish back-to-back because I’d only brought one man author with me and I thought I’d promote him to the middle of my pile and they were set in the North and the South and even though they’d won prizes and been lauded by critics and mentioned everyone’s favourite Belfast bookshops and Dublin landmarks and other local references I was supposed to get and talked about poems and literature, I decided you can have too much Irishness and too much alcoholism and terrorism and abuse and angst and I didn’t rate either of them.

And on day five, the Sally Rooney was back beside the towels, and I didn’t know if the lady had finished it or was disgusted by it or it was time for her to leave. And I closed my suitcase and congratulated myself on a successful reading holiday and returned my key card and thought about how much I was looking forward to getting home because I had more books and coffee and understanding there.