I would like to be able to say that as I lay on the beach this afternoon I was gently caressed by soft breezes and lulled into a comfortable state of mild contemplation by the plangent sound of curling waves. But I can’t.
The wind made smoothing out a towel on a sun bed the equivalent of wrestling with a more than usually fractious two year old child making a bid for freedom, while the wind borne sand particles seemed to have turned into a more than usually callous depilatory machine with thousands of tiny pin prick collisions of grain on skin. The Mediterranean is not the Atlantic and the usual waves are domestic to the point of subservience. Today they were like gauche teenagers ramping about the shore and generally showing off and creating more sound that is seemly.
I, however, positioned the sun bed so that the gently raised head of the bed acting as a windbreak and only a few sand particle augmented gusts managed to land on my unprotected limbs.
As an Old Campaigner who visited Gran Canaria in the winter months and therefore had to go to the beach whatever the weather to justify the vast cost, I was used to lying in what in other circumstances would be described as inclement weather. My motto was always ‘Maspalomas has a micro climate’ as I trudged my sullen way though the dunes towards my Mecca of sunshine I knew would be waiting for me at Kiosco Siete. Sometimes I would lie out in what can only be described as rain, but it was warm rain and I knew that my faith would ensure that the sun would return.
So Castelldefels is easy compared to my training in Gran Canaria. Ah, if only my colleagues knew how hard won that tan I sported in January was they would not have been so spiteful as I mocked their pallid new year skins!
Eventually even I could not longer regard lying in a position where I was being systematically flayed as in any way enjoyable so I raised myself and looked at the sea. I share with my father (and the rest of humanity if we believe old watsisname and power of archetypal images) an unending fascination with moving water. The waves are infinitely interesting and, if you are as myopic as I am, infinitely artistic in their expressionistic (with a touch of myopic impressionism) way.
As I gazed I also became aware of a new dimension to my life long love/hate response to that haunting painting showing a wave breaking and horses emerging from the foam. When I was very young I thought that it was art at its best; as a teenager I thought it kitsch at its worst – while now, of course, I have a gentle post-modernist ironic regard tinged with nostalgia for it. My perception however has been changed by myopia. The white horses of the waves are usually those waves that break directly in front of you and create a flamboyant excitement of foam; but the real horses are those that you see when a wave breaks in a continuous movement away from the observer parallel to the shore so that you follow a continuously breaking wave as it moves away from you. If you are myopic then it really does look like a prancing snorting steed. And all for nothing and not for long.
The wind has now died down and the sun is back out from behind the gauze of cloud and the table needs to be set for dinner on the balcony.
Ah me!
The wind made smoothing out a towel on a sun bed the equivalent of wrestling with a more than usually fractious two year old child making a bid for freedom, while the wind borne sand particles seemed to have turned into a more than usually callous depilatory machine with thousands of tiny pin prick collisions of grain on skin. The Mediterranean is not the Atlantic and the usual waves are domestic to the point of subservience. Today they were like gauche teenagers ramping about the shore and generally showing off and creating more sound that is seemly.
I, however, positioned the sun bed so that the gently raised head of the bed acting as a windbreak and only a few sand particle augmented gusts managed to land on my unprotected limbs.
As an Old Campaigner who visited Gran Canaria in the winter months and therefore had to go to the beach whatever the weather to justify the vast cost, I was used to lying in what in other circumstances would be described as inclement weather. My motto was always ‘Maspalomas has a micro climate’ as I trudged my sullen way though the dunes towards my Mecca of sunshine I knew would be waiting for me at Kiosco Siete. Sometimes I would lie out in what can only be described as rain, but it was warm rain and I knew that my faith would ensure that the sun would return.
So Castelldefels is easy compared to my training in Gran Canaria. Ah, if only my colleagues knew how hard won that tan I sported in January was they would not have been so spiteful as I mocked their pallid new year skins!
Eventually even I could not longer regard lying in a position where I was being systematically flayed as in any way enjoyable so I raised myself and looked at the sea. I share with my father (and the rest of humanity if we believe old watsisname and power of archetypal images) an unending fascination with moving water. The waves are infinitely interesting and, if you are as myopic as I am, infinitely artistic in their expressionistic (with a touch of myopic impressionism) way.
As I gazed I also became aware of a new dimension to my life long love/hate response to that haunting painting showing a wave breaking and horses emerging from the foam. When I was very young I thought that it was art at its best; as a teenager I thought it kitsch at its worst – while now, of course, I have a gentle post-modernist ironic regard tinged with nostalgia for it. My perception however has been changed by myopia. The white horses of the waves are usually those waves that break directly in front of you and create a flamboyant excitement of foam; but the real horses are those that you see when a wave breaks in a continuous movement away from the observer parallel to the shore so that you follow a continuously breaking wave as it moves away from you. If you are myopic then it really does look like a prancing snorting steed. And all for nothing and not for long.
The wind has now died down and the sun is back out from behind the gauze of cloud and the table needs to be set for dinner on the balcony.
Ah me!
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