A too-rough-to-swim morning

29th May 2023

There was sunlight on the horizon, like hope, but you had to look pretty hard to see it. The bright future was stuck to the bottom of a heavy lid of cloud that hung over all of us, high, mighty and overbearing.

The sea matched its heavy menace. Waves crashing down at head height, lumbering towards shore and then rolling themselves into grey hoops with dirty, drooly edges. No one in even a vaguely sane frame of mind would go anywhere near it.

A too-rough-to-swim morning. We stood looking, breathing in the extraordinary air, faces damp with sea, feeling the relentless north easterly wind that has taken the warmth from the potentially bright days of Spring Bank Holiday weekend.

We stood, we looked, no one suggested a dip. The one positive was the return of Rupert’s Mum and Rupert, safely home after their very Scottish adventures. We still miss our Canadian.

There is something extra irking about missing a holiday Monday swim. It feels like a long time since Friday and, even the most delightful weekends can be enhanced by a dip on their closing morning.

The fisherman said that the wind would last a week and it has. There is a weather system stuck over us, apparently, holding the high pressure in, giving absolutely everyone who ventures outside some kind of irritating reaction to the great handfuls of pollen being pushed off the fields and hedgerows by the wind.

It’s a different dynamic to swimming together. After a light polite chat, we trudge across the shingle, dry and much as we arrived, no mad rush to warm up, no healing salt water immersion, no free and invisible rejuvenating sea energy to see us through the week.