Well. The scars on my knees and elbows were just about healing from falling on the pavement the other night (pavements here are like mini mountain ranges, rising and falling by a foot for the numerous entrances, and just as you think you're on a straight stretch, they've got cunningly plotted halfbust concrete sewer covers which tilt alarmingly beneath your feet. Walking requires serious concentration. Plus, I was a little bit merry.)
Then I woke up yesterday and discovered that the intermittent sneezes which had developed in the airconditioned minibus tour, had turned into a Full Blown Cold. I'm certain that it requires peculiar skills to have a cold in Bali, but I'm just that kinda girl. So spent the day in bed, finishing Gone with the Wind and replacing it with a PD James trilogy (she's not bad, in fact)
And woke up this morning, feeling like a new woman (as I sometimes do), and decided that instead of a cultural day at the arty centre of Ubud, I'd have a serious surfy day. Bartered around for surfboards (price ranges are big: varying from 30,000 per day to 150,000 - ie, 2 to 10 pounds), got me a new bikini (never mind new, it's the first I've ever posessed) and got to work. Well, it was a pretty good day of not-surfing: I have reasonable proficiency at falling off the surfboard, or hovering next to my board looking as if I'm waiting for a really good wave to come along - while the not-good-enough waves bury me. But the only miracle of the morning was that my bikini stayed on. Changed to a bigger (easier) board in the afternoon, and a second miracle occurred: I surfed! - granted, it was only for about 3 seconds, but I was standing, knees a-quiver and arms flailing as the mighty power of the ocean swept me along. Unfortunately, the first miracle failed at some point during the giddy exertion. But I don't think that many of the thousands of people on the beach noticed, and I managed to recover fairly discreetly.
Anyway, despite various efforts with sunblock and sitting in the shade while reading, I now feel that certain areas of my anatomy should have remained unexposed to the sun. And that I've sat down more than enough for one session.