J Got our favourite spot at the far end of the lovely sandy beach away from the hordes, a stripy-blue umbrella, a flask, sandwiches

S I enviously watch wind surfers with their sea-butterfly wings, but I won’t waste money on something I might not be very good at

J Attention-seekers, I call them

Citroens with sagging suspensions hauled Morocco’s extended families down from northern Europe as they headed towards the ferry at Algeciras, roof racks piled up with refrigerators, televisions, sound systems, all strapped on with rope.

The beaches were caked with flaked-out bodies, gunged up with cream and sweat, forming a second, shimmering, undulating skin.

S So here I be, Stanley Orville Cleve Williams, doing his thang on a never-ending holiday with a gorgeous woman, who can’t get enough of me

J I bought him the Complete Works of Dickens for his birthday. Now his head’s always stuck in it

S She snatches my book and runs off into the sea with it, again

J Come and get it, lover-man. Whooo-oooo!

S Her dimpled cheeks shimmer so sexily, I’m mesmerized (still)

J Better hurry up or Nicholas Nickleby will end up drowning, or can he swim?

S Whoever invented the thong should receive the Nobel Prize for Services to Mankind

J What about Oliver Twist? I reckon that wretched little mite needs a good bath. Or did they have jacuzzis in the workhouse?

S I chase after her to retrieve it, jumping up and down like a madman while she dangles it out of my reach

J Back at our spot, he tickles me as revenge. I’m begging him to stop, tears streaming

S I want ice cream! she screams until I give in out of sheer embarrassment and go get some. When I return, David Copperfield is buried face down in the sand

Gangs of leather-clad riders wrapped in black sunglasses and seated on low-slung motorbikes cruised along the coast with unhelmeted recklessness, as if the trip from Germany had taken but an hour and they were really winged raiders in a sci-fi movie.

Package-tour coaches converged, clogging up the coast’s arteries, offloading pasty-faced hopefuls outside the forecourts of sprawling resorts and ferrying them back with blistered noses and infrared shoulders from Marbella and Fuengirola to the airport, thereon back to the North’s insipid sun and inevitable drizzle.

J When I wake up, he’s here. When I turn around, he’s here. When I go to sleep, he’s here. Can’t believe my good fortune

S Minutes give birth to hours, hours to days, days to weeks, weeks to months

J Too hot for the beach now – we sit under the awning of the caravan with bags of ice on our heads

S Let’s drive to the upland village of Mijas tomorrow, I suggest, licking up iced water as it tumbles over my lips