I'm writing this at beach. Oh the wonders of modern technology. That I can sit here, on a towel, with only seagulls for company, and churn out a column. The sky is grey, the early morning drizzle has cleared, the tide is coming in.
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I've come here to reboot. Times are a changing, you maybe have noticed, I'll be leaving the relative comfort of the weekend magazine world and be heading back to news reporting any day now. (But don't worry, I'll still get to ramble here in a Relax that belongs to someone else.)
But my reboot is about so much more than that. It's about letting things go, beginnings and taking hold of new opportunities. So it's only fitting that I come to the water's edge to do that. As I sit here, the waves come in, go out, come in again, a steady rhythm that has always soothed me.
There's something about the ocean. I think when you have to seek it out, when you have to get in your car and drive through twisty mountain roads, you're entitled to mystify it. Entitled to give it greater meaning.
I've come here, on this cold July day, for a ritual cleanse. I stood in the water and let it lap around my knees, misjudged one wave that lapped a little higher, and some part of me wanted to strip off and just get in. Total submersion. I may be a little crazy but I'm not stupid. Swim between the flags. A mantra for life, maybe. Maybe that's been the problem.
And now I've settled on my towel. Just watching those waves roll in, their gentle power, lifting and rising, reaching for something.
I'm sure the ocean is a woman. Water and life. Gentle but strong. Don't respect her and she'll dump you hard on the shore. And people are always drawn to her. Even if she scares them.
As a child, reaching the shore, on the annual pilgrimage to the coast, meant you were finally on holidays. It was a chance to spend all day in the sun, swimming, building castles, playing cricket, eating sandwiches your nana had packed, as six of you angled for the shade under an umbrella. You'd get sunburnt, find sand in all sorts of places, stung by bluebottles, struggle to reach the bottom occasionally. But life, real life, was hundreds of kilometres inland.
When I seek out the beach now, as an adult, it's for a couple of reasons. So my children can experience the same release from their lives, even just for a couple of weeks. So I can have just a little of that too. Don't you miss that? That ability not to worry about anything?
But more often, which is why I don't mind being here on this cold winters day, it is to remind myself that no matter why it is I need to reboot, that actually these reasons are not as significant as I'd like to think. And really that neither am I.
The ocean is endless, and relentless, and those waves keep coming. Their rolling curves perfect before they start to foam. Their arches full of water. Always, always reaching for shore.
We're all just specks of sand. Who knows where we'll wash up.
But I am rambling now. I need to get my toes back in the water, I need to feel the cold against my skin. I need to chase my new seagull friend that has landed beside me hoping I might have a chip. I'm sorry friend. Come back at dinner time. If the rain holds off.
A song comes up on my playlist … Fiona Apple's Container. It's the theme song from The Affair. An excellent show. An intriguing song …
I only have one thing to do and that's be the wave that I am and then sink back into the ocean.
Time to be wave that I am.
