Just one thing
Friday 12th July
It’s Friday. It’s grey, the tide is low and the wind has swung to the north. On the beach, it’s around sixteen degrees and feels chilly. Not exactly mid-July high summer weather.
The beach seems dry and dusty. There’s heather but the big blowsy flowers are gone. Now beach flora is tiny. Kneel on the shingle to see a bunch of coin-sized green shoots surrounding a miniscule dot of red flower, walk over the grass, look down carefully and you might see a tiny orchid or a bunch of egg and bacon birdsfoot trefoil, or small purple mini blossoms, rare and lovely but so small, they’re hidden from height.
There was an early swim today, appointments and so on pushed people into the water at half seven. We’re the main eight o’clock shift, the proper swimming time. It’s an hour before the first low tide and the water is choppy as chop, ankle-to-knee deep and gradually to waist.
I stop on the top of the last bank of shingle to watch the fisherman bring his boat in. It’s a substantial modern fishing boat, weighs three tons, he’s on sand, on his own. By the time I stop to look, he’s side-on to the beach, bow pointed north (that’s the side I’m looking from), about three metres out. It looks like he’s come to a stop but he’s at the back of the boat, somehow steering.
The boat rocks back and forth, ninety degrees one way, ninety degrees the other. He’s barely visible, only a head taller than the back of the boat. If you weren’t sure that he knew what he’s doing, you’d think that the boat was going to rock over and fill with water, stuck, swamped, a disaster appreciated only by gulls.
The other swimmers are changing and chatting. I tell them to look and then all of a sudden, the boat’s bow is pointing up the beach, the fisherman runs to the very front of the boat, climbs to the edge of the bow, stands for a moment and jumps onto the damp sand, (a jump that’s taller than he is) and grabs his line as he’s doing so.
A friend of his has arrived and has put down one of the rubber planks, there’s sometimes a whole line of planks. I guess they help stop the boat sinking nose first in the soft sand. The fisherman takes the line to the winch and hey presto, in the time that we’ve taken to change into swimming stuff, the boat is parked back on the beach.
The sand is soft and the water is low and we wander out as if on a hydrated balance board. We wobble along up to our knees and then our waist and then our shoulders and a swimmable depth and suddenly, there is the Canadian swimming and warning of a forthcoming wave. We jump. Suddenly, the water heading for us is taller than we are. We jump again and again.
We joke about this being a yoga class. Mrs Professor Peru, who was once wave-wary and frankly tizzied about a ripple, is now a wave master, braced side on for the incoming, a strong and fierce warrior. Professor Peru notes that it’s rather uneven under-foot (that’s the sea bed for you).
After some minutes of jumping, the wind begins to chill and we head in on the sand wobble board. Cousin stretches a hand to land Mrs Professor Peru, I’m on my knees but only for a moment. We make a chain to land charmingly wobbly Professor Peru and he laughs again when he’s successfully in.
We’re all in except for the Lawyer who is completing his one hundred strokes across the horizon being watched vigilantly by the late-arriving Boatbuilder who has wisely opted for a deep paddle.
I only did one early solo swim that week, six am, beautiful, calm, cool, selfishly face to what turned out to be the only sun of the day. It was a wonder, but I felt exhausted by three pm.
Today, we are remembering Michael Mosley. We’ve done our cold water, we’ve done our balancing. We’ve stretched out and in getting changed on the beach. We’ve laughed.
Just one thing (four).
