A picnic breakfast of juice, baguette, jam, yogurt and fruit. The others look down upon us, literally, sitting on the ground without the standard issue Euro-camping plastic retractable and totally compactable picnic table and benches. At least two must sit at this miniscule table for four, otherwise the whole thing topples over. The shady pines protect us from ten o’clock onwards, when the brown people saunter towards the foamy surf, the rounds stay in the shade, stoking the barbecue, snacking, thinking about lunch. Dogs must remain tied to the site – and so a scraggle-puppy, alert, lops tethered to the family car whilst the family sits down, around the corner and behind the camper, to another gut-bursting summer meal. A month on the seaside means bringing a refrigerator and stove, which get plugged in under an erected plastic kitchen tent. The kitchen tent stands beside the outdoor dining room, which is outside the extended camper bedroom and bathroom. The outdoor dining room is converted to an outdoor salon in the off-hours. Keen campers bring a TV and antenna and situate themselves on a plastic chaise-lounge with cushions. The TV noise competes with the stereo noise and the paddleball going on in the empty site next door. Holidays are no time for clothing. Mothers fry fish in permanent bikinis. Their husbands, void of modesty, lead with stomachs, shirtless, shoeless, bottomless and shiny. Preteen girls practise a lip-synch routine to raunchy American R&B in front of the mirrors in the lavatories. The Land Rovers and Mercedes are parked in the shade. Fathers polish daily with hose and tea towel. Boys bicycle, bony, brown, transversing sites and intermingling. The babies wail intermittently, under laundry lines of their tiniest shirts and towels, louder than the canaries in their cages hung from the trees and covered at night.

Seville