16th December 2022
I was a few breaths into the plod across the shingle. I stop, I always stop, an early irritation for the person who might be walking next to me. I want to look, scan the horizon, take it all in. Always beautiful, different every time. A cascade of beauty tipping gently from season to season. I gulp in this view, never full of it.
Swimming is a different thought altogether and by this point in winter, it takes some self determination not to fill my head with, ‘oh no’.
Earlier, in a warm bed in a room so dark that on waking, I think I must have mistaken six thirty for three. Then, surrounded by comfort, the thought of swimming in the sea seems absurd, literally absurd.
Habit, I suppose, gets one to reach for the light and sleep stumble through the morning cat, kettle, cleaning, chores and rituals until I find myself in swimming gear and layers and layers coughing up a breath of frozen air beginning to feel the absurdity
I anticipate seeing the morning sun. The newborn sunrise, only just delivered of the horizon. A treat after Suffolk feels as if it has been under a tight lid of cloud for a week.
A hit of pure morning sunlight and a chance to my swimming pals. Maybe two. Perhaps one. Ideally three. Not the great stretch of morning sea swimming people one finds in the summer. It’s December after all and it’s mostly grey and spitting slightly. There are three.
Our lawyer is in and out in a moment and heading off for a non-ironic warming sauna at the local swimming pool.
The Canadian is getting undressed, catches my eye and says, ‘shall we do it then?’ in the manner of your mum years ago asking you about cleaning your teeth when it was never really a question.
We are ready quickly and we jog over the short distance that remains between beach and water as quickly as we are able.
I shout, ‘fix bayonets and charge’ and she thankfully doesn’t hear me properly, just briefly turns to look at me, confirming perhaps that we’re mad. I make a battle cry deep and loud, intended to stimulate the vagus nerve and distract me from the cold. Getting in, my feet don’t feel so bad because they’re already freezing. ‘One-two-three!’, and we jump and the noise seems to reduce the cold sea chest squeeze.
We’re ok, when you’re used to it, you can anticipate it, lean in, breathe back, all that stuff. The Canadian and I have a ridiculous and brief chat about Wim Hoff, anaerobic breathing and yoga.
Momentarily distracted, the wiley winter sea has pulled us further from shore. ‘I think I’m going in,’ I say at normal volume, turning and heading for the shore, my feet find the bottom before hers. ‘Found your feet yet?’ I call. I can see the answer before she speaks, to be honest. A fractional fear. It only takes a moment. ‘Not yet.’ I stop swimming, turn, reach back without thinking.
‘It’s ok,’ she’s landed and we are both clumsily resisting the pull and clambering out onto the shingle.
It’s a race now. Change before the cold wind catches you. Swimming stuff off and as many clothes as possible.
Rupert’s mum appears, regretfully off swimming because this week, she’s out at half four breaking the ice on the horses’ water, steering them off sweet grass, then breaking the ice off the sheeps’ water, and the chicken water and turkeys’ water and so on and she’s run out of time. She looks pale, more tired than we do from swimming.
Rupert is in a coat for the first time and marginally less bouncy than usual as a result of going to work with his mum,
‘How was it?”
‘Cold. Okay though.’
My face is able to smile a little. Speaking’s become tough.
We are pleased to see her but we can’t stop and be pleased to see her. Stopping at this point results in losing the use of your hands which hinders your ability to complete the getting dressed process.
‘Shall I go ahead and order breakfast?’ Rupert’s mum understands.
‘Yes. Please.’
‘Please’
I get my clothes on and can still feel my hands. I walk to the edge. Stand for ten seconds, counting every one, make the video. An obsession which means I take the view with me.
16th January 2023
Today was made-up swimming. Three of us, hoods up in our long robes, looking at an inhospitable sea as the rain poured down.
I needed to see the sea. Off sick and off swimming for four days. No sea, no sea air, no sunrise.
Really no sunrise. Suffolk had been drenched, grey and dull with rain and drizzle. A vile and miserable depression looming down.
Me too. I wasn’t alone in feeling the weight of it. Even a murky horizon would be better than no horizon at all and there’s always the chance that the beach might have escaped the rain. It happens. You never know.
In my imaginings, I would find a still, mild sea, just a drop or two from above, not much more.
I actually quite like swimming in the rain, there can be a delightful absurdity in it. You’re wet anyway, what’s the problem with a little more water? It can be laughable, laugh-inducing.
I remember being caught in a summer rainstorm with my youngest son a lifetime ago.. He must have been about six, an impossibly beautiful cherub. It was before the jellyfish incident, which stopped him swimming in the sea for years. A terrible shame, he was a sweet and brave little swimmer.
He and I had been bobbing around happily when the rain came, drops at first and then bucketfuls, soaking our hair, washing our faces and getting in our eyes. We were laughing, spitting out the salt water, watching the rain droplets bounce on the water beside us. Initially horrified, we looked at the beach to see our dry clothes and towels becoming quickly and completely soaked. Then we giggled some more.
I can’t remember now what happened when the rain stopped and we got out. Wet towels work and we maybe wore those or wet clothes to get home and reward ourselves for our intrepid and unlikely adventures with a cup of tea and a biscuit.
This morning, there is only a tiny amount of wry laughter and companionship as we wince at the feel-like-freezing droplets are thrown at our faces, stinging.
The beach is three degrees with extra chill from a robust westerly blowing the inhospitable weather front in. There is absolutely nothing appealing about the sea. It looks viscously, bitingly cold, not deep enough to cover anything but your ankles for yards and yards, not gentle enough to sooth.
Had we tried, we’d have been chasing ankle-biters and spent hours nursing the pain.
20th January 2023
The shingle was frozen so hard, I worried that I’d turn my ankle on one of the ridges. My mind fixates on the improbability of anything that salty and unstable being completely solid.
A mental distraction from the thought of the water.
The sun distracts too. Deep orange, half way up from the horizon, casting light and apparent, if not actual, warmth on what lies below.
The beach temperature is three degrees, according to the weather app, although the sharp westerly makes it feel like minus two. It feels like a latent nothing, zero, being made significantly worse by the breeze. The app isn’t there on the beach, wondering at the impossibility of frozen salty shingle.
The app isn’t noticing that the enduring winter puddle on the mostly messy and dirty access lane, damp when excess rain super-saturates already compacted sand. Today the puddle is white and solid with ice that has already clearly being driven over by the people that drive onto the beach (fisherman and policeman) and remains solid and bright white and shows no sign of disappearing into its grimy normal-temperature self. The app should show it as a feature, it would help.
If I hadn’t seen heads bobbing, I would have turned back. Heads bobbing and arms reaching up to wave at me as I reach the peak of the bank of frozen shingle. Herd mentality. Wet heard.
When I was scraping ice off the car windscreen fifteen minutes earlier, chill, sharp gusts of icy wind persuaded me that my the time I arrived at the beach, it would be grim and bumpy and rough and, although a pleasure to see my small herd, it would be much too rough to think about going in.
As it was, the shingle bank, steeper than it had been in months (maybe years, who can remember anything now) led down to what looked like a vast, gently rippling pond bordered by the sun and decorated by its reflection. The gold is sandwiched on the horizon, a generous spread of gilding between the sea and the still-asleep sky.
Apparently, the water is eight and a half degrees, depending on who you listen to. It goes up and down by a degree or so each day, guided by tides and storms and unknowns blown in from the other side of the horizon.
Not that you’d notice. It feels very cold indeed, staggeringly, spiking cold.
This is my first swim in a week. It wouldn’t matter were it not the winter. Laid low by a virus, and then taken away by work, a week begins to make a big difference to how the swim feels. The cold water becomes quite a shock and if you’ve been sick and calculated your recovery wrong, it will hurt and make you want to cry and shiver and never want to do it again.
This morning, the sea gripped me round the chest and squeezed like it had missed me. I knew that it was coming and breathed right back.
My swim was glorious. Transformative. The kind of experience that has the power to change my day along with the ones that follow it.
31 January 2023
Monday morning malaise. Aches and soreness and background grief. Front-of-stage grief, actually. Right there, whining for attention.
Deep and dark reptilian ripple moves itself to the horizon, each scale reflecting the egg yolk yellow of the nearly rizen sun. It’s prehistoric, perfect, decorated by wide-winged gulls swooping. Pterodactyl cormorants drying off.
I’d be happy to look and whine quietly. My motivational Canadian is ready to go
’The sun is shining,’ she reminds me.
‘But…’
‘But the sun is shining…’
We are in the water and it’s blisteringly cold and deep and beautiful. In moments we are joined by Rupert’s mum and the boatbuilder. I’m first out, scrambling unsuccessfully up the shingle. I don’t want to be lasting cold today, just rebooted.
Puck is walking Rupert. He’s back, beach side only, seemingly full strength, itching to be back in the water.
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