Riding a sea monster

16th August 2024

‘It’s my perfect kind of wave. It’s fat and round, but it doesn’t break.’ We go up and down. ‘It’s a lovely temperature, isn’t it, not too warm, just cold enough so that we feel the benefit.’ We go up and we go down. The water temperature today is eighteen degrees, almost bumping nineteen.

It’s half an hour before the first high tide which means that the sea is deep and blue-green and gorgeous. The waves are almost perfectly breakless, they come ashore as a tiny ripple with an edge that is completely clear through which you can see a selection of pretty pebbles. We go up and we go down. ‘I can’t see many jellies’, ‘Haven’t felt one this morning.’ Down and up, up and down. ‘What about the match then?’ We go up and we go down.

‘Helloo!’ We were saying you should have swum down,’ we go down and we go up, ‘We’ve got the builders coming,’ ‘Did you see the tide in Aldeburgh yesterday? Running so fast, you’d have been in Southwold before you knew it.’ We go up and we go down. ‘I have some beet leaves for you.’

We go up and down perfectly smoothly, like a expensively engineered ride in a water park. The waves are substantial, high tide waves, but they are wide not tall. They are the steady and regular breathing of the biggest sea monster in the North Sea, a curved back with tiny spiky ripples; a reptilian texture .

It’s official high summer now. Inland is like a temperate corner of the Sahara, a more or less continual twenty eight to thirty degrees, air thick to the point of foggy with harvest dust. Harvesters are almost at the end, all the grains are gone but inland there’s no damn wind. Nothing to blow the dust away. Open the windows, nothing fresh but the dust creeps in. I know no one who hasn’t got a runny nose and spends more or less every spare moment wiping surfaces.

We go up and we go down. The sea is full of happy heads. Known heads and unknown heads, unknown unknown heads. Those are the heads from afar. Most of the Suffolk coast at the moment is packed to the water’s edge with visitors. Toddlers paddling in party dresses. Mature bodies in dressing gowns. Windbreaks and picnic rugs pinned to the shingle while someone snaps about sand in the chips. Dogs that swim, dogs that wait, dogs that have no idea what they’re doing. Teenagers wearing sunglasses so as not to look as if they are eyeing one another up when they are eyeing one another up.

‘A good sailing breeze!’ we go up and we go down. ‘Why did the helicopter come, then?’ We go up and we go down. ‘The helicopter was on the beach.’ ‘I don’t know. Do you know? No idea.’ ‘Do you know?’

The air temperature is a lovely twenty degrees with a gentle north west breeze of only eight mph or so. There’s not much of the wind but it’s just enough to give the sea monster scales and to ensure that no one can hear a word each other says.

We go up and we go down. ‘I think I’ve had enough now ,’ ‘What’s that?’ We go up and down. ‘I’m getting out now.’ ‘It’s lovely isn’t it?’ ‘I can’t hear you.’

Eyes rather than ears prevail. Someone gets out onto the beach and then someone and soon enough, all the known knowns are out and changing and still failing to hear a word one another says. ‘They’re going now.’ ‘I can’t hear you.’ ‘WHAT?’ ‘Say again.’ ‘Breakfast?’ ‘He’ll be at the football.’ ‘We’ll be here Monday.’ ‘I can’t hear you.’

The sun pokes its face through a badly crocheted cloud.