My First Starfish

1.  A Frosty Start

2.  A Chilly Middle

3.  A Summery End

The nicest day of the weekend, according to the forecast, so we had a plan. Rockpooling en famille. Then The Man can do and do his Boat stuff tomorrow, and Son 1 aged 5y 7m, Son 2 aged 2y 8m and I will have a quiet day and then go to Church at teatime. The Sun Was Out, The Sky Was Blue, There Was Not A Cloud To Spoil The View apart from my horrible cold, which when I woke up this morning was pretty fluey.   I bombarded it with Beechams and caffeine, and we loaded the car to drive to The Beach By The Garden. Yes we can walk it, but Son 1 and I have colds and Son 2 was knackered.  We arrived and The Man strode over to the Far Side of the Beach.  “Where are we going?” I asked. “I thought you wanted Rockpools,” he said. The Far Side has rocks made from knife edges crammed together and coated in razor-sharp barnacles.  In a Northerly. Neither Son 1 nor Son 2 could move without adult help. And we caught no fish.  I tantrummed.  We folded up the beach mat, stuffed our shoes in the buckets, and crossed over to the other side, where Son 2 and I have spent some pleasant Wednesdays. 

Blanket spread out by the sea wall that sheltered us from the wind, Son 1, Son 2 and I went off with our nets and little fish tanks.  We caught three shrimps, a crab and a little fish.  I was pleased with the crab.  Other people rockpooling always seem to have scores of crabs.  I’d never found any.  True, our one was missing a leg or two, but still, it was alive.  Son 1 was very good at fishing.  I always have to chase the shrimp, fool the shrimp into going another way, joggle the shrimp out of its hiding place. Son 1 just shoves the net in and catches the shrimp. I changed into my swimming costume.  The ocean was calling.  The tide was out, the sea was turquoise and flat, the waves were long, shallow ridges silently stretching up the beach.  “Why would anyone want to go to the Med when it’s like this?” asked The Man. “Because it’s not always like this,” I said.  “It’s cold, and grey and dangerous, and it rains.”  I went in.  Last year I developed a Getting In technique for swimming in the sea.  You march in for 100 paces and then SWIM.  So that’s what I did.  It was very, very, very cold.  So cold it felt like an entire layer of skin burned off on impact.   A very cheap chemical peel.  I did some gentle breaststroke.  100 strokes seawards, then some back.  There were other people in without wetsuits… but no-one stayed long.   I couldn’t really breathe – as soon as I went in my chest did something rattly because of my cold.  My nose was totally blocked so I had to breathe through my mouth, and I didn’t really feel very well.  So I swam back.

The boys were rockpooling again, so I went out on the rocks hoping I’d warm up. We found two hermit crabs, a couple of shrimps and a beautiful anenome… a deep pink leopard print. I caught a couple of normal crabs.  Son 2 kept trying to drop stones on them. ”If you’re not kind to the creatures then I’ll tip them back!” I barked. Some students came over to see what we had.  I went for coffee, and Son 2 insisted on coming. He cried all the way over because he said he was cold, and then demanded an ice lolly.  When we returned, The Man and Son 1 were still in the rockpools. The Man came back, and then Son 1, holding his little fish tank. “He’s got something to show you,” said The Man. ”Look Mummy, my first starfish,” said Son 1. “We didn’t catch it. Someone gave it to me.”  A pinky-orange five-pointer.  It was my first starfish too.  We put it back in the sea, and saw a mighty brown crab scuttling along, so we scooped that up with the now-empty fish tank. Son 2 took it back to show The Man. We only just made it home in time for Tea with Nanna.  We told her about our day.  ”On the radio they said that when you catch the first starfish, it’s definitely summer,” she said.

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