Knee deep...

... for Knots in the String.

One of my most favourite summer songs!

The words smack of all that is a coastal summer.

For the first summer in three years, we’re actually having ‘a summer season’! Days of sun, seabreeze and swimming.

I feel as if I’ve come home.

As a child living in a little coastal village, the sea was as natural to me as breathing. I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t swim and the feel of cool water closing over me as I dived in was like balm. Swimming gave me freedom – another world to explore and one I felt so safe in. Being a baby boomer, we were given leeway the likes of which First World children today will never see. We swam without worries of drowning or dangerous sea creatures, we boated without lifejackets (it was assumed that if we fell in, we would roll over and swim until retrieved!), we surfed, knew about rips and undertows and what to do, we never wondered about white pointer sharks, and if we got stung by jellyfish, well, so what! The sting would fade eventually.

I was a pudgy child and bullied, but when I started swim training as a Grade Fiver, they discovered I was pretty good and I began to win races – for myself, my school and finally, the state. I became a state champion and in high school was always part of the school swimming team. It gave me a kind of self-belief, something that had almost been destroyed by the bullying of earlier.

So yes, I love swimming. It’s as though I’ve been given a handful of gillyweed. Me and the sea. And this week I shall swim until my fingers develop ‘prune skin’ and I am salty all over. At dinner, my shirt will grab onto the salt-stiff hairs on my arms because I never shower the salt off until bedtime. It’s all part of summer – that weathered, gritty, outdoorsy feel. Which is probably why I have many freckles, thin skin, wrinkles and lost 1/3 of my right ear to skin cancer. C’est la vie, I guess.

As I write this at the dining table in the cottage (my husband and I share this as office space), I can hear the waves on the beach. The seabirds are vague, but the garden birds are loud because I’ve just filled the birdfeeders. The agapanthus are swaying in the seabreeze and the rhythm of the breaking wave is mesmeric, soporific. The fragrance of the Madame Alfred Carriere roses drifts around the table and I can feel my eyes getting heavy.

Am I allowed to have a snooze?

I did an hour of ballet this morning and then drove the hour and a half back to the coast, so I’m a bit tired. Maybe just a short shut-eye?

My Time

Swimming obviously.

But cooking too. Shortbread, Brunsli, Zucchini and feta loaf (filled with fresh herbs from the garden!), choc chip cookies. Finding a recipe from the Hebridean Baker  for a delicious Swedish potato cake (sweet not savoury). Between all the family, everything disappears pretty quickly.

Gardening – weeding the veggie garden, cutting back the herbs which have gone feral and readying a patch for kale, for chard and maybe late pumpkins. Picking zucchini, basil, spring onions, potatoes. Picking strawberries, loganberries, boysenberries, raspberries and silvanberries and it’s probably sampling those which has brought on a diverticular attack.

A few hearts for www.1000Hearts.com.au Not my normal florals, birds and bees. But puffer fish, houses attached to balloons, kites and so forth. A strange lot.

Writing letters. Actual handwritten (albeit bad handwriting) notes to friends.

Writing more of the Work in Progress. Maybe it’s because I’m relaxed, but the writing just flows. So do the images in my head which is always a good sign!

Reading

On Kindle, I finished the House at Mermaid Cove. I recommend Lindsay Jane Ashford. Consistent and absorbing fiction. Tale-telling - the best form of fiction.

On audio, I finished Cornwell’s Gallows Thief. Sooo good. I understand there’s no sequel. Pity. Superb characters.

I’m now listening to Graham Norton’s Forever Home which is a good summer read. It has a depth to it which surprises me (I shouldn’t be, because Norton should have a huge grasp of story and character). He’s a nuanced narrator as well, which is vital.

I’ve also pre-ordered With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E. Grant which is a self-narrated journey through the cult success Withnail and I. It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Grant, and whatever he writes and reads is normally a stellar experience for me.

Watching

Trying to avoid anything with Mr and Mrs. Meghan Markle in it. Suffice to say I find their whinge-fest exactly that.

Instead, we’ve watched all of Alone Denmark, binged Huss, more of Spooks, Miriam and Allan Lost in Scotland, and Camilla’s Country Life. A good week’s viewing.

Tomorrow, we’re childminding and the forecast is good, so I suspect we shall head to the waterside, beach trolley filled with truck, bucket and spade, kickboard, dive rockets and goggles for the child, beach seats and towels for us and hats and Number 50 sunscreen for all.

I’ll swim.

And maybe sit on the sea floor and listen to that enigmatic, soothing tick tick that is the underwater language I wish I understood.

Another summer’s day – knee-deep in the water somewhere.

I hope your week is excellent. Stay safe and look for your pocketful of happiness.

See you next time…