The lake in question was Lago di Fiastra. The course was proceeding nicely and after the afternoon my friends spent at the pool wasn't as relaxing as they had thought it would have been, we thought some TLC at a lake would be just what we needed.
We met at the bus stop in Camerino and, as per usual, shotgunned the back of the bus. It was a kind of twisty journey, one of those vomit-inducing rides where the front of the bus is about three corners ahead of the back. So if I wasn't looking forward to lying in the sun all afternoon before, it was about to become necessary.
If you were wondering how things were going with Gaby after last night, I can't really tell you. It's not that I'm keeping a dastardly secret for her, or that it was so unpleasant I dare not speak of it - the truth is I don't know. She stumbled in bladdered out of her theatrical mind... again... at goodness knows 'o' clock in the morning. I was up and out of the house before her, I lunched with Lynette and Susan, and the first time I saw her was getting on the bus.
She immersed herself (like everyone else, due to the road conditions) in some music and when we disembarked at the lake she suddenly decided that hiring a sun-lounger (like the rest of us) was a silly and expensive thing to do because all the cool people (like the ones in her class) were totes going to rough it on towels round the headland.
So with Gaby out of the picture, Susan, Lynette, Bree and I hired our outrageous sun-loungers (2Eur - woh...) and sat ourselves in the sun. It was a hazy afternoon - warm, of course, but the sun wasn't beating down and frying everything in sight like normal. Conditions were perfect and with the breeze coming in off the lake, I really could have stayed there for hours.
This didn't happen.
Bree was very keen to dip her feet into the cool waters of Fiastra and very keen that as many of us as possible should join her. Lynette did with little persuasion, but Bree wanted to encourage me to get involved as well.
Problem.
I had no pants for my bikini and going without tends to be frowned upon even in Italy (despite the prolific nudity that appears in public places). I was wearing pants, you'll be relieved to read, but not the kind that you can go swimming in. Still, I wanted to cool off and have a paddle, and paddle I did. Not for long - there's only so much time you can kill walking up and down while your friends are swimming about 10 feet away.
It wasn't long before I decided that my 2Eur sun-lounger was more fun and I went back to join Susan who had resolutely denied all requests that she join us in the lake - she was minding our stuff. It wasn't long before Bree and Lynette came back too as splashing about for more than about twenty minutes when you're not eight can get a little tiresome.
It sooned turned out that lying down on a 2Eur sun-lounger for any more than twenty minutes wasn't to Bree's liking either and she got the mother of all itchy feet.
'Aren't you bored?'
'Not really' I replied.
'Let's do something.'
'Like what?'
She scanned the horizon and soon found something that would entertain her adequately.
'Let's hire a pedalo.'
We all sat up and turned to her.
'A pedalo!?'
A pedalo.
We hired a pedalo.
There were several for hire - six-seaters and four-seaters. There were four of us, so brilliant, let's hire a four-seater pedalo. Susan did not want to do this. She was very much enjoying lying down and was very concerned about the stuff we would be leaving behind for all and sundry to pilfer (she must have been an expert at keeping an eye on things whilst her own eyes were shut...).
So we were about to hire a four-seater pedalo with only three people. We threw the offer out to those around us and soon found that no-one wanted to spend an hour with us on an unsteady craft in the middle of a very deep lake.
'Why not ask Gaby?' said Bree.
We asked Gaby. She thought that with all the money she had saved not hiring a sun-lounger, hiring a pedalo would probably be ok.
We set sail.
Now after having read that relations were a little strained between myself and Gaby, you may have thought that an hour with her on the aforementioned raft of death would have ended in just that. It wasn't nearly as bad. The thing about Gaby is that Gaby is quite like her Desperate Housewives character. Gabrielle Solis was (at times) self-seeking, self-interested, self-ish - anything that has the word 'self' in. It is not by chance that I called my Gaby, Gaby. So though I was finding Gaby a little irritating, she was oblivious to this and a harmonious hour on the lake together would only take a deep breath and new attitudes to tolerance on my part.
We all had a lovely time. If you've never pedalo-ed on a calm Italian lake as the sun set before, you really should give it a go. It actually did wonders for mine and Gaby's friendship and I left the lake a whole lot more relaxed about the situation.
Once we hit dry land, it turned out that Susan was now very bored (and had been for some time), but as the sun-lounger hire people wanted their sun-loungers back, we were left standing around waiting for the bus to come with very little to occupy ourselves with.
The coach arrived eventually and we piled on and took our seats. Gaby wanted to sit on her own with her music and proceeded to lip sync (much to our amusement) all the way home...
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