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Shouldn't have been passing Sandymount anywhere near this early. But hey, shit happens.

Dublin Bay is damn fine in the morning.

Looking forward to playing with this little puppy from today on.
And yes, I'm aware that posting a pic of an old Canon SLR with hipstamatic risks a fatal hipster irony loop.

Damien's tatty book blotted out the near-noon sun. He held the yellow block aloft with a pallid white arm, elbow locked. His stomach reflected heat skyward, and he held the pages between his face and the light to shade himself while he read. The page was in shadow, but enough light reverberated back up off the hot sand to illuminate things, the beach baking with such intensity he could hear it. The heat hissed and fizzed in his ear like television static, and the horizon wobbled to the thermal buzz. 

Framing the page was the royal blue of sky, cloudless except for reedy threads of white cast by passing aircraft. With a sea breeze yet to fill in, the hot air hung dense and still for miles upwards. Heat blocked out all real noise. Only mildly aware of the other beachlife, the hawkers and their prey, Damien glanced at his two companions, slumped like belugas  on sun loungers. Both lay facing away from him on their left sides, turning pink, and glistened with the sweat of a deep hangover. He could wake them, he thought, but probably only for a moment. They would turn like sausages under a grill, and would at least cook evenly on all sides. He imagined the two-tone effect of sunburn on the right-hand sides of their body and decided to leave them. It would make for some fun that night. They had press-ganged him into this hellish holiday, so he was owed a few laughs. 

What they had seen of the island of Gran Canaria was predictably shite.  Within it festered Puerto Rico - a noxious, sandy armpit of a town. In fact, it wasn't a town, it was an 'urbanizacion' , a word which suggested it had imposed itself on the island forcibly. Puerto Rico must have sprouted up out of scrubland spontaneously, clinging to the volcanic rock against the island's will. Where there were rocks and shrubs, now there were shops and pubs.  Puerto Rico heaved with flourescent beachwear, junk food and cheap beer, day and night, in and out. It reeked of low-grade excess. Its heartbeat was hard house. Its eyes were lit with neon. For Damien, a self-possessed snob, this was his personal hell.

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