I will write a self-help book unless I die of hypothermia

15th January 2024

This morning, my six thirty alarm shouted, ‘what on earth are you thinking? It is very dark and very cold. If you go outside, especially if you go outside and deliberately get wet, you will die of hypothermia. It’s a scientific fact.’

Time becomes seven. It is still completely dark and still extremely cold. I’ve only briefly opened a door and can confirm that outside it’s dark and even colder than inside. Which is generally pretty cold.

I make a bold decision. I will embark on positive self talk. That’s what they call it, the people who write self-help books, ‘positive self talk’. It’s like re-branding. Rather than fill your head with, ‘oh, god, I must actually be mad.’ You fill your head with, ‘how exciting, I’m going to the beach to see my friends.’

I will write a self-help book. If I haven’t died of hypothermia.

The ice on the windscreen is thick and stubborn and takes significantly longer than I’d planned to clear. I already feel cold. On a positive note, it’s now only ninety percent dark.

The car says that the temperature is minus one although my phone reckons it’s currently minus three rising to a heady two.

There’s a ditch alongside a lane that I pass on the way to the beach. Slightly sinister, rural vintage. Completely full since November. It’s wide enough to hide a body, perhaps a bike, between its wonky-edged, grass-fringed edges. Spikes of some or other dead plant matter poke up through the brackish brown. This morning, it’s completely frozen, dead plant spikes gripped in the ice.

The beach is bathed in golden light from the just-about-risen sun and jaw-droppingly beautiful. The sea, just after low tide is gently calm and, if you were going to get into the North Sea in the winter, this is the sea that you would get in to.

It’s so beautiful, it’s almost possible to ignore the fact that the water temperature is now just seven and a half degrees. The beautiful beach, soft rain-clean shingle, a wide stretch of pristine sand kissing the water’s edge, feels like minus seven. Minus seven.

We’ve seen off the north easterlies for now and have replaced them with a west-north-west, described, generously, as a stiff breeze. Strong enough for the flag to be stretched out horizontal again, just in the opposite direction from last week.

I’m slow getting changed — it’s so damn cold, it takes me ages to get my gloves and socks on — and am the last in. Puck and the Canadian, forever hardcore, linger for me. I’m ankle deep and begin to make a noisy fuss about the temperature when I trip on a wave and splash straight into the deep patch right next to them. Yes it’s cold, but the feeling is so wonderful after a week away from swimming that it’s utterly worth it.

We swim a little, smile a lot, make noises, hail the now rizen sun, turn round and head to shore. It’s a fuss getting out.

The real painful hassle is getting changed quickly enough. Numb feet straight away. Numb hands soon after and a very much reduced capability to get wet things off and dry things on. By the time I’m into mittens, my hands hurt. Of course it’s worth it.

The Professor Perus are in Peru and we miss them. They send beautiful pictures of warm caramel-coloured wrong-way-round beaches