Swimming through the start of term

Friday 6th September

I find it astonishing that there are mornings when I don’t actually want to go swimming in the North Sea. Getting up and out and heading away from home at the beginning of September carries a heavy satchel/bag/rucksack shadow. Would anyone mind if I left it for later?

The weather is posted as a ‘light’ east-north-easterly and at eight, we’ll be just an hour after the first low tide. The water will still be shallow. Knee-high waves might sting. It could be too shallow actually to swim. I’m mentally composing a note.

It’s meant to be twenty three degrees. Hmm. How much of that warmth will be breezed away on the beach?

Cousin knocks. Meh. I need to behave like a grown up. I still don’t really want to go but today I’m driving the school bus.

The sound of waves landing on a shingle beach sounds huge and menacing, however big the falling waves actually are. Perhaps it will be too rough to go in? The flag is straight out.

Maybe I can sit on the beach and take in the wonder. Or burrow into the shingle a little, curl down under the wind with my eyes closed, listening to the rhythm of the waves? Quite soporific. I could possibly get twenty minutes before the day begins.

My bag thrown sulkily over my shoulder, I reach the top of the shingle bank, the point at which I can at last see the sea. At first glance, it is a glorious rich and deep and expertly polished gunmetal, rolling in with frilly breaks under a hazy sky that’s clear enough to let the sun poke its face though the headteacher's window and make a note of sulky latecomers like me.

It turns out that the first lesson is p.e. Fresh air aerobics with a beginners’ gymnastics on the side – a full-on introduction to the new term.

I’m late. I need to get a move on. The rest of the class is in the sea already or back on the beach drying themselves after their swim.

I hurry into the sea sideways against the oncoming waves.

They roll fast in my direction at head height, great grey green masses of water that fall and break into bosomy bundles of frilly white froth that race towards me at roughly the height of my chest. Jump. When I land, I’ve already moved northwards a little, pushed by the mass of water. I swim a few strokes back towards where I’d started.

Quick, pay attention, stand up and jump. Jump. See if you can walk through water against the tide. Re-find your position. Work your leg muscles. Perhaps it’s easier than swimming? Turn! Don’t switch your gaze from the incoming waves. Jump. Jump again. Oops, use your hands to dry your face. Stand up again, please.

Being in the sea is transforming whatever you feel about getting in. Any reticence, anxiety, shyness or hesitance is instantly washed away. The sea is a wonder, at times a selfish extrovert that doesn’t let your attention waver even for a moment.

Jump. Higher this time (don’t want to miss it again). Jump. Pay attention! Look, you’re already fifty metres away from where you lazily dropped your bag. Swim harder please. Or walk, there’s always walk. Walk through the water against the bossy old tide or, perhaps, walk out of the water and enjoy a stroll along the sand.

It’s beautiful this morning; a wide ash blond strip scattered with mostly black pebbles. Sometimes, the black pebbles are coke or coal that washed off a cargo ship long ago and far far away. There’s also the occasional speck of seagrass (that’s the new word for seaweed, btw, more tourist friendly).

The sand strip is a living nature table. Who wouldn’t want to walk along that rather than through water fighting against the tide?

The jellifish seem to have gone. No round bodies on the sand, no jelly masses at sea. Perhaps the autumn timetable is too much for them?

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