Beach cabanas make you seethe? Here to help

My wife was seething when someone set up their beach cabana next to us with acres of empty beach around. Other than flashing them an evil eye through her sunglasses, what else could she have done?
C.R., East Lindfield, NSW

Some of those cabanas are huge, right? I’ve seen them all over beaches this summer and they’ve got roofs and walls and tassels and storage pockets and butler’s pantries and a tiny 10 square centimetres of actual shade. So one of those massive monstrosities popping up next to you on an empty beach would be totally seethe-worthy. It’d be like living alone on a peaceful, deserted island and waking up in your hammock one morning to find they’re filming The Block, Season 43 (“A Blockalypse!”) by the palm tree next door.

But beaches are public property, so there’s not really a lot you can do. Casting an evil eye might work, but the sunglasses need to come off: your wife needs all the eye power she can muster to burn laser holes of rage into their SPF55-smeared faces. If the evil eye doesn’t work, she can try these other passive-aggressive cabana-shifters. Loud music: throat-shredding grindcore or Broadway show tunes from the ’80s. Inappropriate podcasts: either Joe Rogan or a sex-therapy podcast about “Oral do’s and dont’s”. Unsettling conversation: maybe something about your recent positive RAT or a heated debate about the “don’ts” in the sex-therapy podcast. Vile foodstuffs: always carry around a can of Swedish Surströmming herring putrefying in its own lactic acid.

If all this passive-aggressiveness fails, don’t go aggressive-aggressive: the world doesn’t need any more of that. Go passive-submissive: just put up with your cabana neighbours or pack up and move to a quiet spot where nobody ever goes, beside the fetid seaweed mounds and the wastewater outflow pipe.

guru@goodweekend.com.au

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