Summer dreams

There was a moment while we were walking along the closed-off streets, and a band of teenaged buskers played Riders on the Storm across the way. We hustled from shade-patch to shade-patch, sunburn stinging our thighs despite having left the beach by ten in the morning. 

Ralph’s hand was sweating in mine as he told me all about the water-soaker he’d just blown $6.95 of his pocket-money on at the pharmacy. The stream of information seemed endless: I learned all about the intricacies of high-tech material that had gone into the making of it (plastic, foam), the hydraulics that enabled it to both suck and spurt water, the additional equipment required for maximum impact (a beach, or failing that a bucket), and the extraordinarily complex battle-plan that would, no doubt, ensure him victory in the battle against his sister on the morrow. 

I had a moment while we walked together and Ralph talked, my head dizzy with the heat, when it felt as though I was somewhere else, outside myself, watching our little family tableau like a movie. 

I was me of 20 years ago, passively watching a middle-aged mother and her child winding in and out of beachside shops on a summer holiday. The little boy was carrying a water-soaker and chatting non-stop, almost drowning out the squeak of his flip-flops, and all the sounds merged with the chatter of a hundred other holiday-makers, shop jingles in open doors, distant waves, and Riders on the Storm which had blurred and distorted into something else by The Doors that I couldn’t quite remember. 

The scene was still happening, Ralph was still talking, but the me of 20 years ago couldn’t identify with any of this. It didn’t belong to her, it was somebody else’s son and they were living somebody else’s life. 

I thought, “How is this even me?” Because I’m still me of 20 years ago, every bit as much as I’m me of today, and I can’t seem to make them fit together. So different are these two women, their lives, their choices… opposite, almost. And yet I was happy 20 years ago, and I am happy today. How does that work? 

We found a bakery and bought vanilla slices because vanilla slices are the best things on earth and we are on holidays and anyway, the diet starts tomorrow. The vanilla slice brought me back into my body which was bad timing, because Ralph chose that moment to open a bottle of fizzy water and it exploded all over all of us, so my body definitely felt that. On the other hand, the day was so hot that nobody minded being wet. 

*. * *

I can hear cicadas in the bottle-brush trees outside. Piercing, they sing in unison, their chorus ebbing and flowing like ocean waves and never fully receding. There is sand all over the kitchen floor and flip flops strewn from one end of the room to the other, where the puppy has picked them up, one at a time, and discarded them. I know I should probably clean up but I sip water instead and open my computer to write, because these are the last days of the summer holidays, and I’m not time-travelling any more. I’m mindful - so mindful - that I’m here and now.

And in 20 more years, when I’m outside tending the apple trees on the tiny farm I hope I’ll own by then and suddenly and unexpectedly float back to the me of January 2021, I want to remember exactly what it felt like. 

The magic beach

There are cliffs at the edge of the horizon, behind the rocky island, so pale and misty they could be a mirage. I wonder aloud at what point the coast curves around, until somebody tells me that no, that is Jersey. The day is so clear that we can see all the way to the British Isles. 

We arrive just as the tide is drawing out, unaware of how lucky we are. Long stretches of golden sand, still rippled with the marks of the waves, unfold under our feet. We explore rock-pools, a waterfall, an infinity pool built into the ocean wall. Gingerly we step between barnacles and in and out of patches of seaweed, making our way to a fort and prison on a hill. (Only a few hours later, there will be no beach at all, and the fort will become a wave-battered island.) Here are ancient walls, hidden rooms, and breathtaking views across to the castle walls and the old town. 

I picture all of this under water in only a matter of hours. The paths, the steps, the hewn-stone alcoves... and then I think about Atlantis, and I wonder...

The children start the day in long pants and jumpers and slowly shed layers as the sun grows in strength, ending up gleefully racing across the sand and through the shallow waves in just their underwear. We plan to visit for two hours and stay for seven instead, barely making it to the last bus home, tired, sunburned, and overflowing with happy memories. 

As if to complete the cliché, seagulls circle above the castle towers, calling. I feel joy. 

Pirates! For centuries, the treacherous coastline, hardy sailors and impregnable castle walls made our magic beach a haven for pirates. Think of every swashbuckling Treasure Island story you have ever heard: yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, and all the rest. Ruthless crews would lay in wait for English, Dutch and Portuguese ships carrying gold, spices and other precious cargo from the Caribbean, then hide their treasure away in the many secret harbours and hideaways that pepper the cliffs and coves. In the 17th century the King of France legalised the pirates (for a share of the profit), and so they became known as corsairs, privateers pillaging on behalf of the Crown. They were so feared that British mariners called our beach 'the Hornet's Nest.' 

Ralph chooses a random spot in the sand and starts digging. "Soon I'll find treasure," he announces, with supreme confidence. 

This is a place rich in history and beautifully, sometimes brutally, ruled by nature. As we clamber over the still-wet rocks, Scout starts chanting to herself softly, "At our beach, at our magic beach..." from a well-known children's book we have at home. The book is about a beach that is beautiful and magical in its own right but, on every second page, the children in its pages imagine something more: knights battling dragons; an exhilarating underwater race on the backs of seahorses trailing pearls; smugglers, sneaking along the rocks at dusk. 

The book is called Magic Beach.