Eowyn did us a favour

24th January 2025

Grey, dreary, wet, weary Wednesday. The high cloud cap is still here, still, still here, blocking light and preventing even tiny peeps at the sun. The grey bright-less-ness mostly wears one down to the point of slight headache most of the time. Nothing moves.

And yet here we are, traipsing down to the beach, hoods up, hats on to keep the drizzle out. Reminding ourselves, and one another, actually, that it is eight am on Wednesday 21st January 2025, and we’re not dragging ourselves through the endless, lightless, winter of 532 a.d. or thereabouts.

The fresh POTUS doesn’t help. No one mentions it. Unmentionable. Never spoken. Everyone (the gang is a handful - it’s January) knows. Don’t use up your oxygen speaking his name. Don’t acknowledge the whole world’s trip downhill in a handcart.

We especially never say anything in front of the Canadian. Least of all that he’d have her become an American like him.

It’s a distraction.

The reason for schlepping down to the beach on a dark drizzly winter morning is that the sea is still. We’re two hours, more or less, before the first low tide so the water is a comfortable depth. Easy to swim in, easy to reach your feet down if you wish.

We ignore the temperature at this point, celebrating the lack of wind on the beach, a small trickle from the north east, barely noticeable unless you're actually bare, and no one’s ever bare, not for a moment. Not in January anyway.

The sea has a gentle roll, round, comfortable waves, the kind that augment the stillness, serve to distract one from the temperature. This morning, it’s six and a half degrees. Very cold. Could be worse. Just.

The waves distract me as I head into the sea. I’m approaching the water side on, so that the waves don’t break onto me with full strength. Side on, they slice past my legs and I barely notice them. Having already numb legs helps me not notice them too.

I’m thigh-deep when the large skein of Brent geese fly over. If I was to turn and rush to shore, get my phone from its dry place and rush back, I will miss them. They will have disappeared south.

As it is, I stand in the water, watching admiringly as they pass over, in a charmingly messy V-shape formation. The point of the V looks perfectly aligned. Further back, there are one or two who wobble out of line and then join the formation again.

Then gone, high and south, by which time my legs are crimson and getting fully into the cold water seems almost soothing. I swim for a very short while.

Chat on the beach is about how not bad it is with not much wind. The rest of the world is falling apart and we are fully consumed by weather. We are nearly always consumed by weather.

If you swim in the North Sea all year round, what matters is the weather and the tides. Quite enough to think about. All encompassing thoughts, the difference between life and death.

This week’s swims are also imbued with foreboding, not political foreboding but premonissions around the coming storm that would take away our habit for we didn’t know how long. Eowyn would surely stop us swimming on Friday. The worry was that it would be longer.

Sea swimming is a serious addiction. Named storm is scheduled to kick its way across the country and stop you getting your fix. It’s a concern.

I’m writing this on Saturday.

Eowyn did stop us swimming on Friday. It was windy on Thursday and Friday (23rd and 24th). Not catastrophically windy, even empty wheelie bins didn’t blow over.

In this small easterly sliver of Suffolk, we are lucky. We haven’t lost power or roof tiles. This morning, the sun is shining, the silver winter sea ripples gently and earlier, looked just too delicious not to get in.

Eowyn did us a favour in blowing away the cap of high cloud that had been holding things still for so long.

Back on Wednesday, it felt as if the birds shared our foreboding. Gulls darting back and forth for food, geese heading out.

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