We are still on the Amalfi coast today. It is hazy, but the sun is trying to peek through.

The view from a terrace, at breakfast, this morning in Positano reminded us of the view from the balcony at 19 Cater Street, Coledale, in Australia, where we visited my parents many times. Unlike here on the Amalfi, there is a thin strip of plain – flat land – between the escarpment and the sea, making human settlement easier. Here in Positano, I have no idea how they manage to build the houses clinging onto to the cliff face, like magnets.

The Cater Street house was on a steep hill, that my father, Stan the Man, coined ‘Heartbreak Hill’. It had far reaching views east to the horizon. Geoff loved sitting on the balcony and reading in the peace and quiet. When he could! If Stan, my father, found him on his wanderings around the garden – he was always pottering – he’d interupt his solitude with endless kookaburra chatter. Dad loved a chin wag.

Yesterday, the sea was particularly rough in Positano, making it impossible to enter the water from the swimming terrace, constructed with concrete over rocks – there is a lift that takes you down 300 metres through rock to reach it. It was too rough to attach the swimming ladder to the edge of the terrace. You had to enter the water from the beach.

 

This took some expertise. Gill Davis, my friend and dancing partner in Australia, told me that waves usually come in sets of seven, followed by a lull. (Her husband is an ace surfer, having started as a grommet in Cronulla in his early teens. He is now almost sixty and can still surf the big swell with the best of them.) I instinctively knew how to read the waves, growing up and swimming in Aussie surf.

Most of the Germans, Americans and Italians at the hotel, were obviously ignorant of this phenomenon; I watched, with mouth open in horror, as they were repeatedly knocked to their knees entering or exiting the dumpy foreshore. One poor woman was knocked over in flippers, and couldn’t get up. I hate to say it, but it was her great weight that kept her horizontal for many minutes, before she could roll over and somehow get to her feet.

I went for a swim several times, and being Miss Bossyboots, tried to explain to whoever was on the beach that they had to wait for the lull. They seemed grateful when they made it through to the washing-machine like sea further out without injury.

Later, Geoff and I had another game of tennis on the glorious court, and then we headed to Chez Black on the beach front at Positano harbour for some more carbs at dinner time.

Today, we are catching a ferry to Amalfi, the town.