Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside!

I went to the seaside this week, for a day. It was like a mini holiday. I went with my support bubble - sister, brother-in-law and teenage (or nearly) nephews. And it was lovely, in the way that you forget the seaside can be.

Despite pictures a couple of weeks ago of packed Southend and Bournemouth, Clacton-on-Sea was, on this day, not too busy at all. We could find a patch of beach and a few rocks to ourselves with plenty of sandy space around. The sea was breath-catchingly cold at first (and I only went in to mid-calf, not being a cold water lover!) but standing in the wavelet-rippled shallows, my feet were soon warm. My gaze drifted with the water, over to pier, out to turbine field, further across to sea stretched out, a view broken only by a few sailing boats. Gulls circled and called, sun-edged wings glinting in a blue sky.

Adventure golf was played (why isn’t it called crazy golf anymore, I wonder?) - and the aim is to get the highest possible score, isn’t it?! Which of course means I won, and my brother-in-law lost. Or perhaps that’s the other way round. I never have been very good at the sort of co-ordination required to hit a ball with an object held in my hand, be it tennis or hockey, or on one memorable occasion, an attempt at polo.

Ice cream was consumed, and candy floss too by the youngest of our bubble. A ladybird was rescued from a pool of seawater, and a gull followed us up the street in hope of crumbs of sausage roll. The breeze disguised the heat of the sun, and when we got home we realised that various patches of skin were burnt.

We sat, and we walked, and we paddled, and we talked, and we listened to the sea, and we watched the tide come in, and we chilled out. It was just what a day at the seaside should be. Even my mind, usually racing and chattering like water rushing through rocky rapids, slowed to the rhythm of the small waves, and circled lazily with the thermal-riding birds.

But then again, too much slowness isn’t my style. Next time, as well as all the chilling out, I want a ride on the helter-skelter that I saw over on the pier. There’ll be plenty of material for mind-related metaphors in that, after all!