For hours, the moon was the primary light source
1st January 2024
The moon alone lit the background of the early winter morning. Vast ink black clouds flooded the rest of the sky, blotted the birth of a far-off sunrise. For hours, the moon, waning gibbous, was the primary light source.
It was still in charge when I reached the beach, although it’s always lighter there. No trees and other landscape clutter get in the way of the fresh daylight squeezing through the horizon.
The car park was weirdly full, reminding me, for the first time, that it was New Year’s Day. Perhaps there’s a fishing competition? I’d missed New Year’s Eve. A wretched throat and chest cold. Advice from yourself and everywhere not to go to the beach in the morning. Don’t whatever you do get into a winter sea.
I lingered for the Canadian and Rupert’s Mum. We walked slowly up the slimy track. The ground is still slippery, puddle-patched, winter-soaked grass stubble, stray stones. It’s gloomy, the horizon light shadowed by the shingle bank.
On top of the shore-side shingle bank, the view is extraordinary. So different from our usual nothing. A scene from a tiny bohemian festival in southern California (without the warmth, obv). People hanging out on the shore, colourful stripy wind-breaks, a sweet wood smelling tea kettle, tiny toddling children in bobble hats, body boards resting on the sand. At once, a group of about five ran into the sea to swim and then there were more, laughing and shouting with the cold.
We formed our little encampment to the far left hand side. The electrician was back and ready to swim. The boatbuilder had beaten us. We changed, met our lawyer coming out.
It was five degrees on the beach, the south westerly still there to greet us but the pink light somehow made it more bearable. We’ve had wind here. Strong stirring southerlys and west-south-westerlies that have made the sea race and thrown up waves that crashed sea walls and were visible on the horizon.
The east coast hasn’t been blown as hard as the west, but it has felt relentless and although not the easterly beasts that take the skin off your face, the wind has been enough to make us cold and tired of the noise and sick of the constant cold draft.
This morning, the pink light that seeps from the horizon before the sun comes had bathed everything in a soft and beautiful fake-warm sunlight, a ‘vivid warm’ filter. The sea was polished pewter, frisky waves that were manageable and arguably took your mind off the bite of the January cold.
The water temperature was apparently eight and a half degrees although to me, it felt colder. I hadn’t been in for a week. It squeezed my chest, waves giggling about not swimming with a cold. We were about two hours beyond low tide, deep enough to swim in, shallow enough to find your feet between waves.
We smiled and swam, bobbed over the waves and watched for the next one, greeted friends, soon agreed that enough was enough. The perfect new year waves helped push us up on to the beach and we still laughed in the cold pink light as we were changing. Happy new year.
A skein of geese in perfect formation flew past over the near sea, and then another. The sun came up behind us as we walked away.
