Singular Saturday

A family trip to the beach for the first time in years today proved to be a Freaky Friday sort of experience. I’m not suggesting I turned into a drunken slapper maniac-driver deluded-wannabe-singer starlet of crappy remakes, rather that the predicted levels of parent and child enjoyment were surprisingly inverted.

Miss Lonie, who was probably expecting water somewhat like a bath’s, was unpleasantly surprised by the cooler waves. Protesting she needed socks and a jumper, she thereafter refused to even let the water wash over her feet and played half-heartedly in the sand, biding her time until she could prevail upon us to take her to the playground. Master Lonie’s reaction too was somewhat disappointing. He spurned the sea we’d driven two hours to reach, preferring instead to crawl after seagulls in the hopes of sampling a feathery taste sensation even better than the sand he’d shovelled in his mouth by the handful.

Mr. Lonie and I, on the other hand, frolicked in the waves like flabby white porpoises and built sandcastles with an enthusiasm perhaps a little odd in people of our vintage.

While Mr. Lonie minded our wet-blanket children, I waded out into the brine and realised that I was grinning like a simpleton as the waves gently swelled against me. Now old and daggy enough to care nothing for what strangers might think of me, I jumped and ran and fell and laughed like a lunatic as my bemused children looked on.

The tide flowed, the breeze picked up and time, inevitably, passed. On the way home, I asked Miss Lonie if she’d had a good day.

“Not really,” she said with a comical wrinkle of her nose.

“Oh,” I said, surprised. “I had a lovely day!”

Perhaps I’m not so old and jaded after all.