Supermoon muddling

Friday 18th October

No ethereal mist this morning but haze. Haze that steals the horizon and applies a pink and glassy gloss to the boundless mystic lake. Our water is in a trance, it appears to have forgotten that it’s the North Sea.

I blame the moon. Dive deep into the sea and you’ll almost always find the moon has been muddling. Hauling the tides upwards, letting them fall down again. Then up, then down, twice a day, whatever the weather.

Last night, Hunter, the biggest supermoon of 2024 disappeared the darkness and lit east Suffolk like an emergency service. If baddies steal our power, we will see. We’ll be able to hunt out the candles, walk to those we love.

Apparently, this supermoon is called Hunter because it marks the beginning of the hunting season, a signal to those that hunt (power cut candles and flasks to fill, hot water bottles, the primus that most likely got left at Latitude) prepare for colder times ahead.

This morning, in the water, the sun pokes its face out, hides its face. When the sun does appear, it throws a thick beam of silver to the shore, takes it away, throws it out again. Lightsaber larking about.

There is a thin curtain of cloud horizontally over the horizon which does its best to be the horizon itself. Behind it is a bigger blue sky, but because the curtain is the same colour as the glassy pink water and covers the horizon, it gives a good impression of taking its place until you realise that it’s not straight at all and can’t be.

Look again. There is a horizon. There’s a silhouette of a container ship and further in, the fisherman, followed by an elegant fanned-out flock of gulls waiting for an effort-free breakfast. Free of their effort at least.

The beach temperature is twelve degrees, a treat for us after last week’s four. Not only that, the wind is barely noticeable. From the north but only around three mph, not enough to blow a dropped hat over the shingle, let alone off your head. It means that we can hear each other speak. Half a dozen humans, for once not miming in the wind, shouting or getting lip reading very wrong.

At just over thirteen degrees, the water is getting cooler pretty quickly but this morning, because it’s so still, barely a wave to hit your face, two and a half hours beyond the first low tide (perhaps that’s when the moon has a nap?) it feels gorgeous. We’re lucky.

This morning, the water is an anti-inflammatory, holding me in its cool arms, lifting me up and soothing stressed moods. It also moves me north because I’m not paying it proper attention.

I’ve spotted the paper-doily manifestation of Hunter, artistically positioned over the top of two pine trees, far back from the shore, our westerly horizon, a perfectly posed image only visible from the sea.

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