Sea-ing...

... for Knots in the String.

Sea-ing… or… seeing… it’s all the same. Come with me…

There is an iconic rock across the water from my home, an island with a craggy crown that my grandfather and his ilk used to call the Cockscomb. These days, that ruffled ridge on Maria Island is referred to as Bishop and Clerk. So banal, I say. Old names create images - the Cockscomb because it looks like a rooster’s comb.

We can only get to some of the island’s beaches by boat and so it becomes a regular adventure (think Swallows and Amazons) with the probability at this time of year, that we will be the only folk in those beautiful coves.

I never tire of the turquoise and aquamarine water, of the lap of the sea against the hull and of diving off the stern steps into an ocean that is pure cliché. Crystal, glass, mirror, diamond and sapphire. The water sounds like a bucket of cullet (broken shards of glass) as I let the boat ladder down. Tinkle, chuckle, splash…

Occasionally, we’ll be escorted by dolphins (this footage was filmed by my son this week). I can’t help the tears when the creatures turn to look at me with the wisdom of the ages in their eyes. What tales they could tell, what advice they could give. They play, they allow themselves to be stroked. The interaction is humbling and one could almost believe they want to communicate because they’re sentient beings, are they not?

And there will be albatrosses – elegant birds whose eye shading is nature’s masterstroke in stage makeup!

At anchor, we eat simply. Warmed fruit buns with homemade jams, crisp crackers with pickled walnuts, our own chutneys and a cheddar. Cold water with slices of lemon inside and condensation droplets running down the outside of the bottle. Sweet nectarines from our own tree, juice running down our chins. Cups of herbal tea.

All stashed in an old cane picnic basket with a navy and white gingham tablecloth and a navy and white spotted tea-towel. There’s always an emergency bar of chocolate if anyone is desperate.

My skin, despite slatherings of SPF50 creams becomes frecklier. Crusty with salt-rime. I wear an old denim bucket hat and cover up as I dry out after swimming. I’m conscious of yet more skin cancer – blemishes that were bred in the unprotected 50’s and 60’s and which are now maturing with cruel regularity in the 2020+’s.

But I’m hard-pushed not to want to be in the water again and again. It’s warm and the salty sea cradles one like a baby. It calls to me, and I think to myself that life’s short, maybe there is no tomorrow and what will I have missed? These words from Rachael Carson via Tom Ryan Author

“One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, 'What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?”

My mother always said: Don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

I think of Carson and take Mum’s words to heart, dive in, swim along the china-white sand, look into the far-off distance of subterranean sea that begins with azure and ends somewhere out there with neutral tint – colours I remember so well from my old tubes of watercolour paint.

I’m content.

The dry, hot weather continues. A long haul. Too warm to garden and one needs to walk before midmorning and in the evenings for comfort. The Terrier and I walk the beaches where we can wade in the water. No sign of rain on this part of the coast but being farmers and gardeners, we live in hope.

The beach is a siren, calling me to swim. It promises to cool, refresh, to wash away my headache, to soothe aching knees. But I have to deal with the sun to enjoy the beach’s largesse and therein lies the problem. I feel my skin puckering and the skin cancer on my arm becoming angry, so I cover it in Elastoplast until I can see the specialist.

But if the breezes blow in the right way and at the right strength, I’ll be back on the boat in an instant, back to Maria Island an instant later, and will enjoy the chance and make the memory while I can because I can hear Mum saying: Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today…

Music? Ineffably hard. I know the exact track I want but can’t remember the title.

In between times, there’s this… which I also like.

A lot.