The North Sea. Yuge.
Friday 8th November 2024
Chestnut-coloured beech and hawthorn leaves escape in handfuls as we drive between hedges, like confetti over a bridal car heading home.
The rest of the deciduous family hold on stubbornly. Perhaps they will be in place after Christmas?
In truth, the hedges are the best of it.
The weather feels chill and uncomfortable and stuck. There is no change in our little climate when in the other world (the harsh and largely horrid one) everything has changed. We are stuck under a thick and grimy blanket of low cloud. At eight am it’s a frustration. Later, when it begins to get dark (lunchtime), the low cloud acts like a commercial fridge.
We’re being held in a big high pressure system, an anticyclone that stretches from the west coast of Ireland right into Europe. Cloudy weather, no rain, high pressure pressing the cloud blanket down. It’s been here for ten days. Fresh weather fronts, those that may bring at least bring a glimpse of sky, are queueing in the Atlantic.
The sea is simmering with small grey waves. It looks more white than grey, like a pan of water forgotten on the hob except that here’s no warmth. The water looks white because it’s being continually frothed and churned up when the titchy waves hit the shallow bottom. It is proper shallow now. The first official low tide is just after eight thirty.
The water temperature is around thirteen degrees, colder than last week, feels like an indicator of the winter fall. However, the biggest influence this morning is the breeze - it’s east south east, that’s the anticyclone for you - it’s not strong, no hats will blow off, but it feels strong when you’re standing up in your swimming gear.
When the tide is very low, you spend much of your time above the water, standing in the nine degree breeze. Most of your body is exposed most of the time - it’s not sheltered by the water. This morning’s water isn’t even deep enough to lie down in and use your arms to slide through it like a lizard.
This morning, we swim in turn. I walk in with the Boatbuilder. We walk and walk over sand that’s mostly flat, once we’re past the soft and hard steps getting in, and we walk, through tiny ankle-stinging waves, passing the Canadian and Rupert’s Mum, walking the long walk on their way out, grinning in a not altogether convincing way:
‘What’s it like?’
‘Horrible!’
The Boatbuilder and I walk to the sandbank and slightly deeper water, waves that sting our knees now rather than our ankles. Then we proceed to the other side of the sandbank, which in normal circumstances would be the deep North Sea, to find Puck facing head-height waves in water that’s only just up to our waists.
I jump a few, bend down, swim a little, turn and decide to head out. There’s no option but walking. When the weather is better and the water just a little deeper, it’s possible to be a pretend surfer, jumping horizontally onto the small waves and using their strength to carry you back to the shore. Not this morning.
The lawyer is walking in as I get out.
‘These incredible men and women have been swimming in mint jelly topped with whipped cream and Italian meringue. The North Sea - yuge.’ Truth Social
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