27th May 2024
The beach blooms too
All that is green is out. Trees are out, hedges are out, grasses are out and crops are out. Each is busy pushing pollen into the wind if something hasn’t buzzed it up first.
Consequently, aside from the delight in the evidence that nature keeps working (the rest of the world having fallen apart), there is not a single person without a runny nose, or slightly sore throat, a wheeze or ahhhh…fully explosive sneeze.
Sea breath is damp and salty. Accidentally swallow a mouthful of sea and you’d likely get at least a sore throat. Sea spray can make you sneeze but it’s different. Salt water heals.
This morning, the sea is molten silver, rippling and frilly, bathed in early morning sunlight. We’re around quarter of an hour past the first full low tide. The sea is ankle deep for half a dozen steps and becomes gradually deeper to the point that it’s chest depth, starts to feel cold (the water is twelve degrees, not yet a bath) and you can drop in and swim about.
I’m walking in with the boatbuilder, having our Monday morning chat. I tell him off for his sunburn and for working through Bank Holidays. I’m in the middle of this when the water fast becomes shallower so that he’s standing waist-deep beside me and I unintentionally knock my knees on the bottom.
The sandbank is wonderfully messy today, with underwater branches of rippled sand that go on and on, as if they would reach the beach and then don’t, so you trip off them and into the water again. They save you from the face-full of frilly little waves that are pouring over the edge of the main sandbank and would otherwise be head height.
On the sandbank and beyond, a dozen bodies chatting through Monday morning. Rupert’s Mum is back, no Puck as he is confined to the beach after being badly dented on his bike.
I walk off the sandbank, swim half a dozen strokes, knock my knees again, stand up up and walk. The ripples are large and uneven, tricky to walk on. It feels like participating in an outdoor aqua aerobics class.
The beach is thirteen degrees with a wind of around thirteen mph gusting to nineteen. The flag’s full out and it’s not a day for air-drying wet skin.
Around us, the beach is out too. Great magnificent orbs of sea cabbage, accidental lupins, flowers and grasses so pretty, they deserve close and slow attention.
This morning, away from the world, all is beautiful.
I have an Instagram account called @NorthSeaFanClub I post videos of the sea each time I swim.
Your posts are as lovely as ever. So uplifting.