I am lying on a mat in a triangle of shade, in Spain, pressing the small of my back earthward as commanded by a pilates instructor named Nicole. She is on her own mat, in front of a beach at sunset, in California or possibly Australia, on an iPad propped up against a shoe.
“So now we’re really just pumping with our arms, nine, eight, seven, six,” says Nicole.
“Ow,” I say. All around me I can hear the groans of the people I’m on holiday with. We do this every morning because soon it will be too hot to do anything at all. We have chosen this corner of the terrace because it’s the only place that affords both shade and sufficient wifi to summon Nicole.
“And now we’re all gently moving into Happy Baby,” says Nicole.
“Happy Baby?” I say. “What the hell is Happy Baby?”
I look up to see everyone else lying on their backs, legs in the air, knees bent, clutching their insteps. I imitate them, eyes closed, exhaling slowly, feeling the last of my dignity slip away.
At midday the temperature tops 40C. We lie under umbrellas, listlessly discussing the preoccupations of our age and stage – elderly parents and grown children. We posit futures of limitless adventure, but also ones where we move into homes that have no stairs.
At 7pm it is still 39C. My wife wants to visit a shop in the nearby village she has heard about – an emporium selling peculiar items fashioned from straw.
“Will you drive?” she says. “I don’t want to drive.”
“Yes,” I say, even though I don’t want to drive either.
My wife has put the address of the shop into the satnav, but we face a dilemma as soon as we reach the main road. The satnav is telling us to go right.
“But the village is left,” I say. “I was there yesterday.”
“Well, maybe the shop is in that other village,” my wife says.
“The shop has the first village as part of its name,” I say.
“What do you want me to tell you?” my wife says.
“Which way to go,” I say.
“It’s saying go right,” she says. “So go right.”
I turn right. We follow the satnav’s highlighted route up into forested hills. Our small hire car comes equipped with technology that automatically keeps the vehicle between the white lines, but on the twisting roads this means the steering wheel is fighting me at every turn. It’s exhausting and dispiriting, and I don’t know how to turn it off.
“I hate this,” I say.
“Not long now,” my wife says.
I wrestle with the car for another 10km, until we come to the outskirts of the other village. The satnav takes us through the centre of town and out the far side to a roundabout. Then it tells us to go all the way round, returning the way we came.
“What’s happening?” my wife says, as we pass through the town centre going the other way.
“I don’t know,” I say. “But my guess is that we’re now going back to the first village.”
“And then?” she says.
“At the far end of that village there will be another roundabout,” I say, “which we will be directed to go all the way round in order to come back here.”
“Just on and on, for ever?” she says.
“I mean, we’ll probably have to stop for petrol at some point,” I say. I suddenly feel very old: tired, cross, bewildered by modern advances, dreaming only of a future circumscribed by dull routine, and all on the flat.
“And the shop?” my wife says.
“There is no shop,” I say.
But there is a shop, back at the first village, right at the end of our absurd 26km trip, where my wife gets into an argument with the proprietor over a straw horse’s head with a missing ear, which the man insists is undamaged.
“So it has no ear on purpose?” she says. He shrugs.
We drive back to where we’re staying without guidance, a journey of just over 3km. The temperature is still above 35C, and my wife has a bag of weird straw objects to show off. We do not discuss the details of our excursion with our friends, largely because of its unpleasant implication: that we are all travelling in an incomprehensible foreign land called the present.
Or maybe, I think, it’s just me. I find a beer and a hat and a sun lounger by the pool, where I lie back, legs in the air, like a Happy Baby.
