We’re having a heatwave

We’re in the midst of a mini heatwave and everyone is slightly wilting. Only son says he feels tired as soon as he leaves the house and asks to be carried everywhere. This means extra heat for the parent involved, which often tends to be me as he appears to be in a bit of a pro-mum phase and keeps telling me how much he loves me. This would be nice if it did not involve aforementioned pleas to carry him in seering heat and associated humidity.

The best way to cool down is to get into some water fast so we headed to the beach on Monday, along with around 3,000 tourists. We went via the metro just for the air conditioning and stopped en route to see if there were some anarchist books in the bookshop for my brother who is about to publish his first book on the Spanish anarchist movement in the 1930s and was apparently consulted for one of the books. Sadly, the books he wanted were not available, but the shop was air-conditioned so it didn’t matter. We also met a relative at an arty bar on the way to the beach and daughter two had some ecological lychee juice while daughter three tried elderflower juice. Only son was slightly disappointed as he had been anticipating a Sprite after he managed to snaffle one at a party the other day, but had to make do with organic lemonade.

We made it to the beach after a bit of a trek and only son ran at the water shouting. He proceeded to run in and out of the water, grab handfuls of sand and throw them at the sea shouting out some sort of superhero phrases and generally went a bit wild. We told him not to throw sand, but he continued to run round and round and in and out of the sea and then to get totally disorientated and not know where we were, even though we were 10 feet away. I would like to say sitting on the beach is very relaxing, but I would be lying. Daughters two and three dived in and wouldn’t come out for hours and daughter one refused to go in at all and sat reading her book on feminism in the Middle East, fully clothed. The beach was packed and the water looked fairly litter-strewn.

The following day we headed out of Barcelona to meet with some more relatives at a village which is mainly fully of Barcelona people on holiday. The beach was lovely and not nearly as packed or as litter strewn. Only son charged into the water with glee, yelling at the waves, closely followed by his mother, fully dressed as he appeared to be heading out towards Morocco.

We had a brief break for lunch and then dived back into the sea on another beach where there were slightly bigger waves. Daughters two and three are big fans of jumping through waves and only son wanted to join in.

About three hours later we managed to drag them all out for an ice cream and headed for a round of mini-golf with three cousins. Only son is not particularly adept at mini-golf, despite getting a surprising hole in one at one point, but not understanding at all what that meant. He had a McEnroe moment at the next hole where he had to hit a ball over a bridge. About two hours after we started the mini-golf it was finally over, with only son disqualified for the last four holes due to unsportsmanlike behaviour. He collapsed in the car on the way home within seconds of sitting down.

*Mum on the run is Mandy Garner, editor of Workingmums.co.uk.

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