My sand life, my pebble life. My deckchair failure life in that stiff breeze. My eyes filling with tears life as I gaze at a far horizon and think of the people I will never play on this beach with; a ferry passes, going somewhere. My shorts life, the blown beach jabbing me with tiny injections. My listening life, the shell to my ear hoping for the sea and getting myself hissing back. My horizon life, imagining my dad always looking for a new one, always finding a new one. My language life, trying to wrestle these things into words as a gull laughs and a roundabout spins and spins, the mouths of the horses wide open.
My sand life, my pebble life. My life as a series of temporary sandcastles waiting for the tide to throw them in its washing machine; or that lolly stick I used as a flagpole that will soon be swept away. O, my life of embarrassment in front of those others, finding a teabag in the sea and telling people I’d found a sea urchin and it was obvious I didn’t know what a sea urchin was. O, my listening life: at the edge of the crowd listening to a beach preacher preach hell and damnation and thinking that the black clouds gathering around the lighthouse were judgement on my ice cream, my frivolous ice cream. My pork-pie life; so happy I could burst in a hand-knitted jumper eating the crust first so as not to spoil the delayed gratification.
My sand life, my pebble life. My donkey life: I am so high up I think I am flying; someone asks me to wave for a camera and as I wave I realise that gravity is winning and that the ground is miles away. My torch life on a late-night beach where me and the others look like mobile constellations looking for the sky. My postcard-writing life; what else can I say? Can I say nothing and still say something? Can I say something and still say nothing? How do I finish? Where do I finish? Why is the address so long and the stamp so big?
My sand life, my pebble life. My running and screaming life as my brother fishes a spider crab from a rock pool and chases me with it, waving it like a leggy mop, whooping a strange whoop; the spider crab seems to have at least twenty limbs and each one of them wants to scratch me and worse, take me back to the pool which is not like the pool with the crabs in The Perishers that I read in the Daily Mirror earlier. My lost hat life; my running after the hat like the boy ran after the gingerbread man in the story I read to my children and still read to my grandchildren; the tide is out but let’s face it the tide will be in by the time I’ve caught this hat.
My sand life, my pebble life. My life getting my trunks back on under a towel when I’ve tentatively dipped a couple of areas of myself into the fridgy sea and the wind threatens to Marilyn Monroe my towel just as the trunks are off and the pants are almost off. My sunset life, holding up a camera to try to capture some kind of special moment but waiting too long, far too long, hoping for a kind of spectral purple or a lone bird making a silhouette across the frame; too long, too long, the sun’s curtain is down. My bucket and spade life and the spade can never be big enough to dig to Australia with and the bucket can never be big enough to hold all the sand but I’ll keep digging even though Uncle Jack said Australia isn’t straight down China’s straight down but I’ll keep digging I’ll keep digging.
My sand life, my pebble life. My life of sand all across the bedroom floor even though I’ve been home for a couple of days; the beach has become a kind of mobile library that brings me stories wherever I go. My pebble life; that constellation of rocks on the shelf, each one from a particular beach but because I haven’t labelled them I don’t know which but that doesn’t stop them being beautiful just as trees are still sublime even if you don’t know the name of the tree. My flask life; this is a piece of mime that I could take to the Edinburgh Fringe and play to packed houses with because the flask lid has never been this tight before or I have never been this weak before and is my grimace helping? Maybe not.
My sand life, my pebble life. My life measured out in tides, coming in and going out and doing the same again. My life measured out in games of trying to spot the sea first. My life measured out in the delicious and indulgent sadness that comes from leaving a holiday cottage for the last time and for the first time in several days it isn’t raining but at least the kids have had a great time and, let’s face it, so have you.
My sand life, my pebble life.