Hot time in the old town tonight

That's it. Heat has arrived, declaring itself in ice cream sales, summer clothing, sunbathing, crowds at the terraces of the cafés sipping rosé or downing beers. There is definitely a feeling that the winter hibernation is at an end, and the noisy sailors from the gin palaces are beginning their seasonal mating calls with the universally if not originally blonde hostesses. The birds know it, plumping up their feathers and strutting, and so do the flowers, which are getting positively cheeky in their garish displays of colour.

Only one bather today. As expected, a senior citizen. He waded out with purpose, and when the water came half way up his thighs he launched himself forwards in a shallow dive. Good for him, we thought, but then he surfaced and began to look intently at the water around him, choosing a none too direct path back to the shore. Was it hypothermia or something worse?

He began to scoop water with his hands, sending large splashes onto the sandy beach. We were none the wiser as to his intentions, or indeed his predicament.

Further down the beach we found the answer. The hot sun had brought out a swarm of jellyfish, little brown ones in their hundreds of thousands. If I didn't have a visceral hatred of the little buggers from last year's extremely unpleasant encounter with their tentacles, I would have thought this spectacle of nature in all its generosity and vigour had been poetic proof of the life-affirming powers of Mediterranean spring.