What a treat it was to escape to Cyprus for some sun and a last-minute mini-break.

I left the builder boyfriend and the cleaner with strict instructions about a booking for a honeymooning couple, and they promised to put flowers in the room. ‘Go, get some sun,’ said the BB, for I was becoming peevish in the Irish rain.

I chose Northern Cyprus because it was cheap and because all good holidays surely start with a border checkpoint. It was an hour’s drive from Larnaca, but I sailed into the Turkish republic no problem, in a taxi with disco lights on the ceiling.

The hotel was just my thing, not too luxurious because luxury makes me nervous. A plain, comfortable room, a shower that spat some hot water out in a jaunty fashion, and a little balcony with plastic chairs overlooking a mountain range and a swimming pool.

The hotel was nearly empty and I settled around the pool each day to tan myself silly while reading books and doing crosswords.

Because it was slightly out of season, they were building a new pool bar, but I was so glad to be in the sun with no crowds that I put the drilling and hammering down as a bearable side-effect.

This pool bar, by the way, was clearly the idea of the elderly hotel owner’s young son, who strolled about in sportif wear looking like he was taking over the business, and his first trick was obliterating half the mountain view with a square concrete eyesore. Hey ho hum, I thought, that’s the way of things, and I couldn’t have been more sanguine.

After a few days, a sulky-looking young woman slammed herself on a bed right beside me and began to cry into her phone about her husband cheating on her.

Her toddler son was running around the pool edge while she lay stretched out on her back wailing to Shandice for more than an hour, before rousing herself to a standing position and screaming: ‘No baby! Not near the pool! That’s dangerous innit!’

At one point the child wandered all the way out of the hotel grounds into the road, but a waiter brought him back.

The woman had not one but three belly-button piercings, liberally bejewelled, a French manicure – on her feet – and the biggest Gucci sunglasses I’d ever seen. They were like welder’s goggles. She could have worked on a car assembly line in them.

‘I’m only drinkin’ every night cuz I’m so upset cuz of ’im innit!’ she said to Shandice, as the toddler again contemplated falling into the deep end of the pool.

He peered into the blue waters and teetered and I thought I might have to grab him, and slap her in the face. ‘Ee says I should be cookin’ ’is dinner. Anyway, that’s it. That whole sushi situation means I ain’t never goin’ back.’

A woman I took to be the child’s grandmother ran over to pull the baby away from the pool as it transpired that the whole sushi situation was him taking another woman out for dinner, and lots more besides. Which ought to have taught her the folly of not cooking, you’d have thought. Not a bit.

‘So I came up behind her right, and I grabbed her by the hair and I was about to punch her when she spun round and tried to hit me…’

I would have been more sympathetic to her plight if she had sat down next to me and started telling me this sorry saga. But she’d sat down next to me, ignoring 25 other sunbeds round an empty pool, and subjected me to the whole story while denying me the chance to chip in.

She’d sat down next to me and subjected me to the whole story while denying me the chance to chip in

The workmen came back from lunch and the construction of the mountain blocker recommenced and I said: ‘Oh that drilling is lovely!’ Truly, I have never been so grateful for the sound of a disc cutter.

After a while, however, having an angle grinder on one side and her telling Shandice she weren’t cooking no one’s dinner on the other, did rather make me question whether out of season was the way to go.

Eventually, I figured out there was tension in her demeanour every time the owner’s son walked over to see what progress the builders were making in blocking out the view.

Oh, I thought… This was getting good.

Then another woman, plump and hefty in a garish swimming costume, tattooed ankle, sat down opposite and the phone girl and her started shouting at each other about what time they were leaving. And when the other lady who was caring for the toddler tried to speak to her, this big tattooed bird screamed: ‘Get away from me!’

This was really hotting up. ‘Yeah and to fink I was about to move my whole life over ’ere!’ said the girl into her phone. ‘But there’s no way. And now my kid’s gonna grow up without a farva… Owwwwwww!’ And she howled and howled.

The woman opposite then took out a big skin file and began vigorously rubbing the heels of her podgy feet into the swimming pool. Sitting right on the edge of the pool she was, filing her skin into it.

Then she put her iPhone on full blast to watch those clips on TikTok telling you how to deal with a ‘backed-up liver’, and I had to listen to ‘Put two teaspoons of cinnamon in a…’ I bet she has got a backed-up liver, I thought.

At which point, laughing boy strode back over carrying a boom box, and set it up in a nearby tennis court where he and his friends began to whack balls and shout, and I had to listen to an R&B club mix number consisting of a riff of seven notes that repeated for a full 15 minutes.

I started off by being absolutely furious, but after five minutes I realised I was lying on my sunbed, Ruth Rendell dropped to the floor, singing: ‘You know that I can’t break throooough, you know that I la la la la…’;

And the worse thing is, I now love this song and I can’t find out what it is. I’ve come back from Cyprus singing it and I realise I’m going to have to ring the hotel and ask to speak to their son, if he’s not too busy having a whole sushi situation.