Lazy weekend litter

6th May 2024

May blossom waves from the hedgerow like a save-the-date invitation to a summer wedding. Sheep parsley bobs up from the verge, just as pretty, and lacy too, and there is a patch of impossibly round dandelion clocks shouting that it is actually spring time, if only we’d turn off the news.

It’s a lazy sleep-in bank holiday Monday, time for thinking about nothing and everything and laughing in the face of weekday routines. How about another half hour? Might it be just as good to go swimming later, when the bright sun has warmed the water a little? My phone shows a forthcoming sprinkling. No excuse there then.

I am ready to go at the usual time when I lock myself out of the house and car. Frantic call to Cousin to check that she’s not already gone to horses and an awkward canter round to borrow her key.

I’m late but it’s a holiday Monday and no one notices, let alone minds. The sea is perfect, a gentle, glassy ripple lapping onto a strip of speckled sand. The sun has spattered glitter on the tips of each of the waves and planted a perfectly round pool of silver close to the horizon.

On the horizon sails a yacht, full sail, gently moving left to right, a hazy triangular portent of freedom.

There is a group of four bodies standing chest deep, occasionally bouncing a wave or jumping in the water, chatting and splashing and chatting and pecking over the detail of the weekend. There are many juicy morsels: Heritage run marshalling, football.

They have lost Bikini. Heads turn. She’s soon spotted, swimming south not quite out of sight.

The water is mid tide, two hours before high, a perfect sea for chatting. The special thing about this morning is that the water is almost transparent. There have been no storms this weekend to churn up the silt from the bottom, no mean winds to knock chunks off sandy cliffs.

The water temperature is between eight and ten degrees. It feels cold the moment you step in and when you’re deep enough to submerge your body in the water, it quite quickly stops being uncomfortable. Not long to summer.

On the beach it’s twelve degrees, clear sky and a gentle thirteen mph breeze from the north east. The breeze makes it cooler but not uncomfortably so. Nothing about this morning’s beach is uncomfortable, we’re just a little weekend clunky.

Once dressed in dry, the Canadian picks up an abandoned take-away carton, along with brightly-coloured empty sauce sachets. Those that abandoned it had filled the carton with shingle. Wrap your head round that one.

So as not to be left out, I pinch the corner of a large paper napkin that’s been resting unpleasantly between the lawyer’s bag and mine. Then I spot a tiny red Maoam wrapper behind Puck. ‘I’ve got one of those litter picker things at home. I’ll bring that and a bag for next time.’ He will.

There’s nothing like chomping some chips while looking at the water and tipping a can of something to wash them down. People make a mess of the beach. Swimmers pick up litter; abandoned dog poo bags, tangles of fishing line and chunks of cut off net, rubbish that’s washed up from boats but most frequently, left-overs from people that like to eat and drink near the sea.

Do they think that no one will care when the entire space becomes coated with rubbish? Will they simply move on, find a fresh space to litter?

We’re paddling closer to summer.

[Sometimes it’s nice to remember. I’m away from the sea at the moment]