Sing like an Egyptian

By unseen cue and at random intervals throughout the day, loud music erupts from the swimming pool.

It's not just that the music is unexpected; it's that the tracks played are, how shall I say, eclectic in their selection. Drawn from the palette of Euro / Brit pop, the one thing that the tunes do have in common is a dominating bass line and a worm-like catchiness that crawls into your ears uninvited and buries itself deep in your brain, infesting your grey cells and forcing you to clap or hum along entirely against your will. A bit like auditory LSD or the experiment that Pavlov might have carried out had he been on holiday at the time and lacking dogs to hand.

There must be a strange kind of filter at work here for the songs are not taken from any one year or any specific nation. Rick Astley brushes shoulders with Ace of Bass and is on nodding terms with a euro-synth remix of Madonna's 'Holiday' (rearranged to the extent that only the word holiday and the shape of the chorus riff remains from the original). The one song that I do long to hear here is 'Walk Like an Egyptian', of course. It runs unbidden through my head at various points of the day, usually completely apropos of nothing.

Except this morning.

I was loading up our order at the beach cafe fizzy drinks station when, through conspiracy of breeze and light-weight plastic glasses, managed to pour half a pint of diet Pepsi over the teenage girl next to me. That she was wearing her best beach-side glamour outfit - of baby pink halter top and black ruffled ra-ra skirt - for the purposes of flirtatious ensnarement of the male cast of the 'Animation' entertainment team did not help. Luckily - for I am 40 and she about 14 - it was she who was embarassed about my clumsiness, enough for the two of us, and thus my thrice repeated sorries in various intonations were quite superflouous. Whilst she flapped at her clothes and a waiter mopped the floor, I completed the drinks run and wandered back to today's beach base.

I couldn't help but hum on my way: "You drop your drinks and they bring you more". The Bangles truly have a lot to answer for.