To swim or not to swim

20th September 2024

There is light mist this morning but only a hint of mellow fruitfulness. Thin, gauzy almost pink haze gives a warmth to the spiky yellow stubble on surrounding shaved fields. Dark roots appear more forgivable with a warm filter.

There’s an east north easterly in the air. Usually chill but this morning, weirdly, the wind held a warmth. It was a proper breeze, around seventeen mph with gusts, but the land temperature was twenty and the underlying heat for a change trumped the wind.

At first glance, coming on to the beach from the heath at the back and on to the higher shingle bank, from where it’s possible to see the body of the sea and the horizon but not the shore, I’d already decided that it was a day that I wouldn’t be swimming.

It was a mad angry sea day. Wild white horses, waves that look as if they’d tip a tanker. A deep pewter reflecting a patchy, ink-smudgy dark sky into which the sun intermittently poked its hazy face. Nice to look at. Perhaps get a good pic?

We walked over the peak and saw virtually the whole gang in the mad sea.

This eight am was just an hour and a half after the first low tide which meant that, while fierce, the water was relatively shallow. Dare to get in and however much you’re pushed around, your feet will be able to find the bottom.

Bikini and Puck were getting out, which surprised me, until I saw that they were out of the water only to run along the sand for a hundred yards so that they could get in again and ride the mighty tide back southwards, pulled along as if on a white rapid joy-ride in a water park.

I changed in sequence with Cousin and our Lawyer and, despite the low tide and the wide sandy strip between the shingle and the sea, once I was feet wet on the very edge of the water, the waves breaking were intimidating. I’d have to get over them to the calmish bit with the crazy-fast current that flowed between the distant huge breakers and the ones pouring over my feet.

What’s the worst thing that could happen? I get knocked over and rolled around by the sea. Rolled onto the sand and it is my pride that will be dented. Rolled into the sea? I know it’s not deep this morning and I also know that there are people nearby who will help me up and out if I struggle.

I’ve been thinking a lot about doing brave things. Not jumping off cliffs type of brave, but taking decisions that are a little more confident than I feel. Does confidence wane? Where’s the crossover with ‘sensible’?

I walk into the wave and jump onto the rapid ride. Those waves that are further out than I am look huge and frothy as if the sea has been shaking great big bottles of fizzy drink and emptying them so that the spray and the froth pour over in my direction. My face is wet, my swimming hat is wet, I’m speeding south faster than I could run.

I feel the shingle wearing yet bigger holes in my neoprene socks as I’m pulled along on the ride.

It’s pulling south, mostly, but also out, which means that we in the sea watch, keeping an eye out for how far we are from the beach. Given a chance, the sea will slowly pull us further from the sand while whizzing alongside it.

I astonish myself by getting out without falling over. I walk north up the sand and get in again. The far away Canadian would love it.

We watch five geese struggle to make progress against the wind, blown backwards, then sideways and out of sequence before eventually changing height, finding an air channel in the sky along which they could continue their journey north.

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Happy birthday Mike Crockett, most excellent proof reader.