First off, the pictures of the beach weren�t really just me showing what I get up to on a Sunday afternoon. Earlier on in the weekend, I�d been so utterly vile to L that he had eventually got out of the car and walked home alone while I drove.
My response to �what have I done to make you so angry?� was to screech �You? Why does everything always have to be about you? God, you�re so self-obsessed!� Yeh, I know. Not exactly rational, hmm?
Some months ago I mentioned here the terrible PMS I�d been getting and how it turns me into this mental, seething ball of fury, yeh? Trouble is, I am rubbish at counting dates so it kind of sneaks up on me � I don�t get a chance to think �Hmm, got that time of the month coming around again. Better warn the troops that it might get scary out there.� And before I know it, mild-mannered husbands have been savaged and children scatter in all directions as my death ray sweeps across the land. Of course, these days I have many hundreds of extra children upon which to vent my fire and brimstone and I have found that it does water down the effects on my own children of my hormonal wrath, so it�s not all bad!
Anyways, after Saturday�s epic meltdown (for which I have apologised. Profusely. And with much earnest beseeching) I was stricken with the need to Go. To. The. Beach. RIGHT NOW.
We drove down to Mudeford
(zoom in and have a look around � it�s a nice place. So is Hengistbury Head, which is where we were supposed to be going but we took a wrong turn in Christchurch. Duh. I sat on my hands in the car so I didn�t punch L. He was driving.)
I don�t know what it is about the beach. I don�t know if it is because we are an island nation or whether it�s just me and I�m a bit funny, but I find there is comfort and mood-lifting qualities in stamping (that�s not the right word. Sort of marching but not so military. Walking, yes, but with real purpose and at some reasonable speed, so definitely not strolling. Oh, use your own word. Whatever you need.) along the shingle and pebbles and patches of damp sand. I am sure if you saw me, in my anorak and hiking boots and my stupid fleecy hat yanked right down over my ears, frowning as I stride along, head down into the drizzly squalls, you would deffo mark me down under �grumpy mad woman�. But then, catch sight of me again an hour or two later. See how my mood has VISIBLY lifted. See! I may even be holding my husband�s arm or helping him do up his top button on his coat so he doesn�t catch quadruple pneumonia.
It�s mighty strange, how the seaside can do that to a body. I can remember when I first split with Shagnasty � the first weekend I was on my own and he�d got the kids I just sat and cried until I couldn�t cry any more. Then I just got in the car (his car, natch. We were rich in those days and had a Jag) and drove.
I found myself somehow at Lee-on-Solent in the rain, parked up and staring out at grey sky, grey sea, grey everything. In fact �grey� was pretty much how I felt, too, like all the colour had leached out of me.
Out of the car and walking, along the pebbles towards the beach huts. Rain in my face, getting soaking wet because I didn�t have a proper coat. Or proper shoes. Tears once again pouring down my wet face, snotty nose, puffed up eyes, and nobody there to see me so it didn�t matter. Walking walking walking in the pouring rain, hearing the howling wind and the waves and just walking. It takes some effort to walk on pebbles, you have to do it purposefully and watch where you�re going, too.
I walked miles that day. Once I was properly wet I couldn�t get any wetter so I just kept walking. By the time I got back to the car it was getting dark. It was as I was sitting in the car, taking off as many sopping wet layers of clothes as I could whilst still remaining decent for the drive home, that I found I just didn�t feel as desolate as I had before. I can�t explain it. Whilst not wishing to sound like one of those �inspirational� messages, it�s as though all those terrible emotions that Id been feeling were just kind of snatched up, tossed on the wind and carried away over the sea, like a toddler�s chips in the beak of a gull.
On the way back that day, I stopped in at my parents� house. My mum gave me a pair of hiking boots (�in case you feel like doing that again anytime�) � they have a sheepskin lining and are one of my most favourite items of footwear, despite their masculinity and their utilitarian overtones and their sheer unprettiness of the damn things.
Weirdly, I now associate putting them on with �getting rid of this bad mood�, as I go trudging off around the county, scowling and getting rained on.
Do all those who live near the coast feel a tidal pull in moments of high misery? Anna, do you? Do my stateside cousins stare at the other side of a grey, churning Atlantic and have their sulks and pressures and furrowed brows corked in bobbing bottles and caught up in some unseen longshore drift? Do people in landlocked towns/states/counties find solace some other way? What IS it with the sea?
Anyways. Before I get all serious on your asses (that only sounds OK if you say �asses� in the US way. �Arses� just doesn�t cut it, somehow. But I would point out, no donkeys nor other members of the Equidae family were/are/shall be harmed in the execution of this anecdote), I�ll get out of your collective faces and leave you with my favourite poem about the sea:
I must go down to the sea again
To the lonely sea and the sky
I left my vest and pants down there
I wonder if they�re dry�?
Later
S
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