I Read The News Today

What do you read on holiday? Do you read on holiday? The answer is you probably do. Holidays are the defenders of the written word. Remove holidays and books would forever remain unread. But I ask again - what do you read on holiday and perhaps also where do you read? Newspapers on the beach. A total no-no. Too much wind. Turn the sheets and off they fly, joining the lilo bouncing towards France. For me the newspaper was always the treat for après-beach, a cold drink or several on the terrace and the satisfaction of poring over the cricket scorecards. Magazines? Less cumbersome but still prone to flapping around. But which mag? There was an airplane buzzing along the coast line here a couple of days ago, a plastic sheet of advertising trailing behind in the style that used to introduce "World of Sport (with Dickie Davies)". "Bunte - heute neu" (new today). It did the trick in that I went and had a look at what the fuss was. Michael Ballack and some romantic photo ops. I didn't get further than the cover. What is the carbon footprint for flying a plane past Alcúdia and Muro's German sunbathers in promoting a German footballer?

In these days of low tourist spend, newspapers still seem to sell, even at inflated overseas prices. Don't let it be said that people in all-inclusives don't spend money. I was at the all-inclusive flavour of the month, the Continental Park, not so long ago, and a gentleman of bellydom came to reception to purchase a copy of "The Sun" and "The Star". The all-inclusive is the repository of the highbrow. But a brace of red tops will set you back less than one broadsheet that is no longer a broadsheet. "The Times" is a cool 4.25 on a Saturday, the still broad "The Sunday Times" is a whole of your five European euros, and for the Spanish version you only get a decent-sized wood rather than the entire rain forest of the UK edition.

The cheap, local alternative is to cough up a euro for "The Bulletin", but it lacks the sports pages and the gossip of, say, "The Mail" or the red tops. You could go totally cheap and spend nothing, courtesy of freebies. But don't expect them to detain you for longer than a minute. A compromise, at 50 centimos, between the free and "The Bulletin" is the peculiar "Island Buzz" with its absence of buzz.

But newspapers can only eat up so much time by the poolside. The book, or a number of them, is one of the first items on the packing list along with the shorts and mosquito repellent. I have read some of my favourite books ever on holiday - William Trevor's "The Story of Lucy Gault", Ian McEwan's "Enduring Love", Jonathan Meades' "Filthy English", Christopher Priest's "The Glamour", Peter Ackroyd's "Hawksmoor" and Annie Proulx's "Postcards". It's a diverse collection of the gut-wrenchingly sad (Trevor, Meades and Proulx), the master of tension (McEwan), the partly Elizabethan English of Ackroyd and the downright weird (Priest). I am unsure why I am attracted to sadness as a staple for holiday reading, though there have been periods of comedy reading - the Tom Sharpes and the priceless Henry Root letters. I once holidayed with someone who tackled Salman Rushdie. "Midnight's Children" may be revered in some circles, but Rushdie appeared to be more a penance than a holiday, though not as harsh as attempting Joyce or Dostoevsky from the comfort of a sun-lounger. I should know; I've tried them and consigned them to the fall-asleep-in-the-sun file in very quick order.

Whatever or wherever one reads, there is one major issue - not the what or the where, but the how. How does one read? A chair makes the problem easily surmountable, but the towel, the towel on the beach is a serious obstacle. Lying on your back shielding your eyes from the sun - impossible. Lying on your side and that pain in the neck gets ever more painful or the crooked arm supporting the head and neck goes to sleep. Lying on your front and the sweat drips from your forehead on to the page or the sun oil slides into your eyes. Reading on holiday, a good book on holiday is essential, but it ain't easy. Hand me that MP3 player.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Ken Dodd; thankfully I can find no youtube. Today's title - oh, come on, this is too easy.

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