Babble

For many, many years I would have told you ‘I don’t do beaches’.  I could even have provided photographic evidence to support this statement.  Before we all had digital cameras and phones which will Tweet a photo seconds after it was taken the average person took a lot less photographs.  Consequently, the second photograph that was ever taken of me finds me already several months old and on a beach.  Or, more precisely, in a pram on a beach.  It’s a proper, old fashioned perambulator the size of Sussex which I know had been passed down through the family, starting with my cousin Trevor, who is fifteen years my senior, through a number of other cousins to find itself transporting me onto a beach.  Why I’ve been wheeled there rather than carried isn’t clear to me but there I am, sitting up and wearing a jacket.  Yes, wearing a little jacket.  You might assume that this is a winter visit to a beach but the presence of my older brothers in trunks working away with buckets and spades in the background would tell you otherwise.  Still, I look happy enough.  I’m sure there are many other photographs from my childhood in the family collection that show me tanned, wearing some 70’s skimpy trunks, frolicking on the beach and thoroughly enjoying it but in my teens my ‘I don’t do beaches’ belief slowly emerged.  I recall this but have further proof of this since I have a picture of me aged twenty three in which I couldn’t look less like someone who ‘does beaches’.  Once again, I am surrounded by people ‘doing beaches’ by ‘doing ice creams’, ‘doing sandcastles’ and wearing fewer clothes than one might normally put themselves inside.  Unfortunately, an awkwardness developed within me in my teens that was particularly present on beaches perhaps because of the ‘free, easy, carefree frolicking’ normally associated with beaches and the lack of clothing one normally associates with beaches.  I had decided that I had a physique which might induce mental illness in ordinary people and consequently, liked to keep it covered.  Positively, in this photograph I am wearing shorts.  However, I am also wearing shoes.  Not sandals or flip-flops or espadrilles but proper shoes with laces.  I’m also wearing a long sleeved shirt although the sleeves are rolled up.  Most noteworthy of all is that I’m reading The Sunday Telegraph.  Books are for beaches.  The Sun is for Beaches.  Magazines are for beaches.  The Sunday Telegraph is not for beaches.  It is obvious in this photograph that I’m trying to ignore the fact that my picture is being taken but my expression clearly expresses a desire for the ground to swallow me up; “Can we bury you up to your beck?”...”Why stop there”.

 

Let’s jump forward in time to me aged thirty two and my first visit to the United States.  Myself and my partner landed in Atlanta, Georgia and meandered for ten days through Georgia and the Carolinas until meeting up with friends in Tallahassee, Florida.  After a splendid weekend with them we headed south to explore the Florida coast.  They had recommended we visit a coastal town I no longer recall the name of but I do remember that after ten days of falling in love with America and Americans it didn’t impress me.  At all.  Feeling unimpressed we stopped at a restaurant and I had a fishfood pizza which only increased my sudden feeling of dissatisfaction.  We moved on to visit the towns of Port St. Joe and Apalachicola which were much more charming and then in the early evening began looking for accommodation for the night.  We spotted a sign for ‘Turtle Beach Inn’ which I chose to follow and after following a narrow twisting road parked outside a house which appeared to be on stilts.  We were greeted by Trish, the owner, and agreed to stay for the night without looking at the house or the room.  The pattern of our stay in the US so far had been touring and not staying anywhere for longer than one night.  Trish gave us the key and we wandered around the deck which surrounded the house towards our room.  It was then that I saw exactly where I was.  This house was on the beach.  Not by the beach but on the beach.  Steps led down from the balcony onto the beach and a few dozen more footsteps placed your feet into the waters of the Gulf Of Mexico.  I looked to my left and right and although I saw many houses I didn’t see any other people.  None.  This wasn’t like the claustrophobic British beaches I’d previously visited.  What I saw was just miles of pale, silvery sand.  I went into the room, changed quickly and descended the steps and was almost instantly in the warm waters.  I swam away from the houses while my partner tentatively entered the water.  I looked back and laughed aloud.  I really did.  What you need to understand is that I come from a very small town.  A boy called Luke Stamford started at my comprehensive school two weeks later than the rest of the year because he was on holiday in Spain.  Spain!!  The idea of someone taking a foreign holiday was so novel that I still remember this event over three decades later.  I didn’t leave the country until I was twenty three.  It just wasn’t ever within the realistic range of my financial ambitions.  And yet here I was swimming in the Gulf of Mexico.  The icing on the cake was that then three dolphins appeared in the ocean about thirty metres away from me.  They swam and jumped around for a few minutes and then disappeared.  Still smiling broadly I left the water, dried myself and returned to the Inn to find Trish. 

“I think we’d like to stay for a little longer than one night”

“How long?”

“Well, we aren’t due back at Atlanta airport for eight days”.                  

 

I have a photograph of a beach in the panhandle area of Florida.  It shows a thirty two year old man running away from a pile of clothes and away from the camera.  He is naked.  He does beaches.

A collection of poems by Pam

Hey God 

Why the curve ball?

Why the 'catch that if you can' ball?

Why the 'keep you on your toes' ball?

Was I too content, too calm?

Thought you'd send a taste of harm?

Sound the head and hearts alarm.

Well you have and it has,

And it did and I tried,

But the throw was wide,

And I fell,

Fell in deep, stupid feet,

Fell in up to pounding heart,

Up to cursed longing lips,

Turned my mind a whirling top,

Make it stop! make it stop,

Take the pain, relax the strain,

Promise I'll never catch again,

Fell too deep,

Now a screwed up trembling heap,

Hey God,

Why the curve ball?

Door

The door stands firm and slight ajar,

And what lies on the other side

Calls and beckons with its soothing voice,

So near, so tempting near, not far,

Not far the gentle pulsing beat,

Not far the warm caressing heat,

Sweet smelling, fragrant rippling stream,

A sunshine beam to draw you in,

To peek,

To sneak a tiny peek,

To feel  the warming gentle glow,

Dip toes into the easing flow,

Push gently open, just to know

How it can be, might be, just see,

Push gently wide,

Inside 

The bleating lamb 

Turns ram

And blast and fast the waters start to flow,

Then crash and splash and break and fall,

Resounding noise and clanging bell

And windswept trees grab swirling breeze

And hurl a whirlwind cyclone blast

Too frantic fast,  too dangerous fast,

But now the door stands wide,

And all the tempting sweetbreads thrown aside,

No longer tasty tempting treats,

But sour rancid sweating meats,

And now the door hangs on its hinge,

And now the eyes burn up and singe,

That tempting call,

A cursed fall.

Beach

Cool breeze, miniature trees, 

In crystal pools below the rocks ,

They creep and hide unseen,

A beam,

A stream of sunlight splits the watery calm,

And tiny beings scurry here and there,

Evading sun, avoiding harm,

And then with needle fine antennae

sound the silent pool alarm.

And we like giant beings 

sit and wonder at the sight.

This microscopic commune

Frozen still  in liquid fright.

We smile with arrogant humour 

At this entertaining play,

Relaxed in warming sunshine

As we wile away our day.

And then we wend our ways back home

In burning crowded lanes,

And glare at fellow prisoners

As the pleasure turns to pain,

We bang and beep and shout aloud

To weary travellers who

Dare to jump in front of us 

And disrespect the queue.

And is there some huge being

Crouched above us in our turn,

Watching every mess we make

And willing us to learn,

And does it watch us dash about

Like minnows in the sea,

Blind to our vain and stupid ways,

Swirl in a blind and confused haze,

Repeated, mindless, painful days.

This is the poem I won the Michael Palin poetry competition for NFU Mutual  with.  It could only contain 12 lines.

Its about time

Its about time we believed what they say

Not raise eyes to heaven and turn them away.

Its about time that we see what's been done,

Learn to cherish each creature kept alive by our sun.

Its about time to hear each frail word,

And acknowledge a wisdom the aged have learnt.

To see beauty in lines borne with living a life,

Recognise the deception that comes with a knife.

Its about time that we all got a share

So the poor, young and elderly can believe that we care.

Its about time to be honest and strong,

Confront obligation and right all  the wrong.

Dawn Sojourn by Karen Nichols

I didn’t sleep that night.  Not much, anyway.

The motel room, strange and uninviting, had smelled like something small had died that hadn’t yet been discovered and disposed of.  I knew because a dead mouse trapped in a wall is not something ones’ olfactory forgets.

Unable to rest, I remember rough sheets and a shabby woolen blanket scattering as I disentangled myself from lumpy bedclothes.  My own bed lay over a thousand miles away and I missed it.   

Tattered red drapes blocked all but the tiniest sliver of approaching daylight, which left the room in shadow.  Bare toes slid onto chilly linoleum and I dressed, taking care not to waken the others.  It was important that this be my adventure…and mine alone.  Fumbling for the room key I had carefully tucked in my coat pocket the night before, I quietly let myself out.  The November dawn was disappointing…a kind of plethora of gray damp, and making my way, I strode between the rows of parked cars and headed towards that street I knew would guide me toward my objective.  I had memorized the map from the “places to visit” booklet left on the desk of the room when we’d first arrived, and now knew how many blocks I needed to traverse before making that first left turn.

I wonder if, as I grew closer, I ever became conscious of the erupting grin that spread across my face and managed to spontaneously supplant my more traditional, pensive guise.  This was no familiar midwestern small town stroll I was undertaking.  No, this was a whole new kind of journey, a sojourn set amidst a city’s clamor.   After the first mile or so, my feet began to find themselves, and my newish Mary Jane’s did little to dampen my pace as it quickened.  At sixteen, I imagine my legs flew, as much as ran, down those unfamiliar streets.  Vaguely aware that the neighborhood houses I was passing, slowly decaying, had known better, more prosperous times, I recall halting at a traffic light…a scenario totally incongruous with my imaginings… and waiting impatiently alongside cars and trucks for the light to change.  Then…and here my memory blurs a bit, that ill placed stoplight finally turned from red to green…and I must have bolted across the crosswalk, and kept on… I recall halting and gasping for air once because my chest had grown molten and heavy.  My lungs, fighting to cool themselves, sucked in huge gulps of cold moist air.  It was right about then that I first heard it.

At first a murmured whooshing, but then big sounds, power sounds…rhythmic cadences that rounded, spiraled and tumbled.  This was the mythic music I had only imagined.  High on an adolescent’s adrenaline, I leapt onto the boardwalk, and with the pure passionate excitement conjured only in youth, I just stood there, riveted.  At last, after all that waiting, and reading about, and hoping for, and sighing, there it lay…rolling out in front of me, opening across the whole of the horizon…my dream…vast and long imagined, come true.

            

I saw it,

dropped into it,

gaped at it.

Drinking salt mist molecules

I let a river etch its course along my jawline.

Course sand grains squished between stinging toes,

And I dashed and thrilled and rode the wet.

Those were the pure waves, the virgin waves,

And they pounded and churned

and polished

and called.

I wanted to burn the whole of it into my psyche for always…so great was the ocean’s impression on me.   And so I ran, plunging into the icy frothing, and then back out again as quickly as I could, snapping a photo of my footprints before the ceaseless, oncoming waves erased them.  I still have that old Poloroid photo…a blissful reminder of my first encounters at the water’s edge. 

From the Beach

I am not a good swimmer.  I have stamina I suppose - at least I used to when I would swim three quarters of a mile two or three times a week – but I am slow and I have no style.  Nor will I ever have, because I do not like putting my face in the water and have never got the hang of the breathing…

Once upon a time, in another life, I went on holiday to the Maldives.  Ninety bumpy minutes by speedboat from the capital Male is the island of Nakatchafushi.  On our side of the island, the sheltered side, there were round bungalows; pristine white with thatched roofs.  The queen size beds were scattered with rose petals, and each rondavel had a sandy little pathway through exotically flowered shrubbery to a private little beach with white sand and palm trees.  It was picture postcard paradise.

The east side of Nakatchafushi is rocky and the north side windy, but our beach on the southern side, segregated by lush vegetation, had the impression of being miles away from this exposure, despite only taking fifteen minutes to pad barefoot around the island to the western tip.  With the exception of a stroll to the northern side before dinner to feed the rays that gathered in the shallow waters at this time, most of our days were spent lazing on the beach, eating club sandwiches by the pool or snorkelling.

The pool is situated mid-way between the restaurant in which the breakfast buffet is served, and the main restaurant also on the southern side of the island.  A wooden deck looks out into the Indian Ocean, past the house reef, on the other side of which is an abundance of fish in Glorious Technicolor.

Shallow waters surround the island and enclosing them, lagoon like, is the house reef; dead coral which is sharp and rocky.  Channels in the rocks allow you to swim to the other side of the reef without shredding your skin and give access to a whole new world.  At first I could not hear the parrot fish munching on the coral, the only sound was my own rasping breath as my cognitive faculties tried to cope with the dissonance of breathing with my face in the water. 

But as the vivid colours swam before me and the shoals of fish darted and moved as one, I gradually relaxed and the vision became addictive.  The brightly coloured coral, the fish that looked like Groucho Marx, the clown fish, and the bright blue parrot fish with red painted lips became part of our lives that week.  We looked for eels and for octopus and came across the dead eyes of a small nurse shark, speckled and leopard like.

This beautiful other world dropped sharply away to the south.  By swimming just a few feet out there was nothing underneath our prone bodies but the utter blackness of the Indian Ocean.  Panic regained control if I drifted too far and I kept close to the reef and held on to my husband’s hand as we floated.

And this became our routine in the cooler hours of the day, and usually in the mornings we were alone out on the reef whilst others lounged on the deck or on their private beaches.  And I relaxed and my breathing became even and now I could hear the sounds of the parrot fish; and something else…

…shouting.

We both hear it and, treading water, look up out of the world beneath us and back to the deck.  A line of people standing, shouting, pointing into the vastness behind us and my heart seems to stop and then race and I can’t seem to gather my thoughts.   We can’t just swim to the beach, to safety.  We’ve swum a fair way from the channel we used to gain entry to the reef, and to swim directly back from our present position would risk ripping legs and arms on the rocky coral, would risk a drop of blood that could be smelt from miles away.  It took me a whole month to even paddle in the shallows of the water in Australia with their nets and their lifeguards, and here I am in the middle of the Indian Ocean a metre away from water so deep that light cannot penetrate it, cannot illuminate what is lurking in its depths.

It takes far less time for these thoughts to hurtle through my brain than it does to write them down, to read them back.  I can see from the look on my husband’s face that similar thoughts are racing through his mind.  We’re still holding hands.

On the deck they are all still there, shouting and pointing, but I can’t hear what they are saying.  We’re too far out, and I’m sure some of my senses are being overwhelmed by the adrenaline pumping through my body.  I can’t remember at what point we turned to face what was out there, but it can’t really have been more than a few seconds…

It would only have taken a half dozen strokes to be swimming with the dolphins; their graceful and gleeful dipping and diving into the sea, the sunlight catching the splashes of water from their rise and fall.  How many were there I can’t say; they wove in and out so deftly it was difficult to tell and they were gone in what seemed like an instant.  Torn between a longing to be with them and more than ever needing the security of the reef we didn’t join them.  I’m not sure my legs were fully functioning.

I’m not sure my breathing has ever fully recovered.

Sharon

 

Beach chase

A seven-year-old is chuckling to himself as he etches three letters in the hot Moroccan sand. The knock-kneed, freckle-faced boy is my uncle Martyn. His elder brother, my father Henry, tries to conceal his confusion. ‘R–B–H?’ he asks. ‘Rat Bag Henry!’ shrieks Martyn as he darts away across the dunes, howling with laughter. My father chases after him in mock outrage until the pair collapse in a heap of helpless joy and a family tradition has begun.

The sky is a stodgy porridge grey. My mother pours stewed tea from a Thermos, the rising steam mingling with the squeals of delight that carry on the biting wind. Her five children are scattered across Walton-On-The-Naze shore, scrawling frantically. One of them is me. Judging by my green seersucker trousers and grey sweatshirt with magenta poppers (a favourite), I must be about 10. I’m having so much fun I haven’t even noticed my lips are blue or that I’ve lost all feeling in the finger I’m tracing across the damp sand. All I know is that as soon as the H has been formed I’ll have to run like hell and I’m so excited my hand is trembling and, oh, it’s done, he’s coming! The H in question, my father, the larger than life brightspark, Henry, is chasing after me; we’re both laughing so hard I can barely run. I stumble and fall and he pounces on top of me, pretending to bash me up. The laughter judders through every muscle in my body, until I’m almost in physical pain. I don’t want it to end. But I know my siblings are scribbling their own sandy taunts and Dad, exploding with new reserves of energy, will soon charge off after one of them as we take it in turns to capture his love. Long after we have loaded up our buckets and spades into the battered green Volvo, a single abbreviation litters the deserted beach. RBH.

I’m in the Sahara desert. A long way from Brighton. I feel like an ill-fated cartoon character who has stepped off a cliff face and is desperately still running mid air. All I know is if I stop, I’ll plunge into the deadly depths of despair that await me. Which is why I’ve taken a flight as far from campus life as I can possibly get. It’s futile trying to concentrate in lab practicals when all I can think is don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. And the Hardy-Weinberg equation doesn’t seem so relevant now that my father who once explained it to me at lengths – patiently scribbling across reams and reams of computer paper – isn't here to praise me for finally grasping it. That beam, that laugh, those ape-like arms that used to lock around me until I couldn’t breathe, are all rotting in the ground 1200 miles away. I get vertigo just thinking about it. So I don’t. A leathery-faced bedouin signals for me to get back on a camel that has just bitten me. I tell him in French that I’d rather walk. Then I sink to the ground and it’s as if my finger is possessed. RBH. RBH. RBH. Nothing.

The heat beats down upon the metal trailer as we swing behind the speeding tractor, the wind soothing our sun-scorched skin. Daniel clutches a bottle of vodka; I hold onto the industrial pack of cling film we’ve just nicked from the kibbutz kitchen. If we’re lucky this guy’ll drop us at Zuqim beach where the rest of our friends are waiting. We return like heroes to cheers and shrieks, and dig out a pit between four wooden posts, before wrapping the giant roll of cling film around and around. The resulting shelter, complete with panoramic views, is even better than our drunken minds dreamed up. We sit and watch the shrink-wrapped sunset, taking turns to swig the fiery vodka. Later, Daniel and I stroll along the shore exchanging big ideas, and our minds meet somewhere between laughter and escape. A shifty little Israeli beckons to us from a wooden hut on the horizon. He’s desperate to practise his incoherent English, which becomes harder and harder to decipher with every puff of the fat spliff he proffers. As he and Daniel speak in huge, surreal gestures, I trace three letters over and over in the sand. Later, lying in our make-shift shelter it’s cold, but in this microclimate of us, this perfect embrace, I feel warmer; heated from the inside by what feels like joy but, I later realise, is love. I drift off to sleep as the tide washes away the last traces of a prayer to my father. RBH.

The Thai moon is so impossibly bright, the pretty coloured lights that twinkle the length of Koh Lanta beach are almost redundant. We eat squid kissed by coconut milk and coriander, and sip sticky-sweet cocktails. Daniel, seems uneasy. His drink is untouched. I knock back another and another and whoop at the perfection of the scene. Our plates are balanced on an upturned crate on the sand. The sea is within a toe’s twitch. There’s not a single thing in the world that could improve this moment. ‘I want to ask you something.’ He kneels in the cool grey powdery sand and the significance of the following four words shifts everything into slow motion. It feels as if the stars are reconfiguring above us as our own personal history is written in time. ‘Will you marry me?’ I am crying so hard, all I can do is nod. He pushes a smiley-face ring onto my finger – I recognise it from a dime store two continent’s back – and, desperate to tell the whole world, I bound down the beach towards the silhouette of two fishermen. I show them the ring and they seem as overjoyed as I am; their toothless grins gleaming in the moonlight as they shake Daniel’s hands over and over, before dragging their nets up the beach and disappearing into the night. Behind us the shack-cum-restaurants are shutting up one by one. The beach is empty. We rip off our clothes and wade into the black ocean; a moment of such purity we simply bob in awe, speechless, beneath the heavens. Later, when My Fiancé runs to retrieve our clothes, I emerge from the quicksilver and fall to my knees, my finger instinctively scrawling three letters in the sand. RBH.

The orange summer sun is extinguishing itself in the sea for the last time at Weston Super Mare. There’s a rare moment of absolute silence as all three of us watch in wonder. It has been the perfect day for our little family: Jonah, Honey and I. A rarity since ‘Mummy and Daddy aren’t married any more. Daddy lives in his house in Warwick and Mummy lives in our house in Stratford. So you’re very lucky because it means you have two bedrooms, and double the amount of toys and…’ There are days when the grief hits like a flash flood. One minute I’ll be brushing their hair, or reading their favourite book… and a sob swells in my throat so suddenly, I physically gag on the anguish. Today is a good day. Unlike the ones when I can barely push back the bedcovers – what’s the point? what’s the point? what’s the point? – I have gathered us all up, bundled us into the car and driven to the seaside. I might be broken on the inside, but on the outside I am Fun Mummy; the kind of mother who chases her children across the golden sand as they howl with laughter. I tell them Granddad Henry used to do the same. They ask where he is now. I drop to my knees and trace out three letters. ‘Right here,’ I say, gesturing to the sand, the sky, their smiles, this moment. We fall into a muddle of limbs and laughter. And a family tradition lives on.   

By Beth