The sea-glass sky is shimmering – or is it the sea? No telling the difference – well except for the waves.

‘I’ve called someone in to help,’ says Sarkozy-man when asked how his knife-edge of a deal is going, ‘a friend from Sierra Leone, a Sandinista.’

He laughs

I ask, ‘really?’- because that’s my role in this scene.

He laughs again. ‘No, but we were there together.’

Worlds collide. Some are brittle. Some are soft. Some are vulcanised rubber.

‘Sarkozy’ – vulcanised rubber man.

Not usually one to miss the chance to observe a new edition of a type, I’m suddenly world-weary. I’m not up for this game. I smile a smile which I intend to seem vaguely impressed and humbled, but I’m not sincere. I’m tired.

I stumble back across the tropical equivalent of grass, strewn with builders’ rubble and desiccated palm leaves, to our room, where I sit on our little verandah.

It’s late afternoon. I look up from my distressing book (bought in haste, I’m repenting at leisure) to see another ‘type’ has found ‘Sarkozy’. Her hair’s up in a carefully careless chignon. Her deportment is perfect, her back straight, her neck long. I can’t see her body but already know it’s slender and her feet are bare.

‘Sarkozy’ is out of his seat and off to the surf. She follows, peeling off her gauzy wrap to reveal an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, no-room-for-a-yellow-polka-dot bikini.

To my right, a few doors down stands a not-too-tall black man with a broad frame. He’s wearing a blast of a shirt, boasts a Bob Marley (but let’s be honest, neater) hair-do and he’s surveying the building works. By his side is a white woman, middle years just settling upon her, nondescript short hair and unassuming clothes. Now there’s a story.