The Life Aquatic

As the lazy afternoon drifted by, we came at last to the almost deserted beach, and I could feel my heart lift. The pebble shore curved away round the little bay, lapped by gentle waves, and the jade green sea rippled seductively in front of us. It had been many years, several decades indeed, since I had been to Corfu, and I had been concerned that it would not be possible to find a beach that was not bordered and disfigured by the garish and noisy trappings of tourism. And yet, here was one that felt as it if might have come straight out of Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, a book that has long been one of my favourites.

This beach was bounded by a little-used road, with only a couple of quiet tavernas set along it at a discrete distance from each other, both of which seemed to exist in a drowsy parallel universe, from a time long gone by. As I walked slowly into the crystal clear water, gently acclimatising myself to what felt like the cold, but which probably only felt that way in contrast with the warmth of the day, I glanced down into it. Already I could see the darting flashes of small fish, and I sighed through my snorkel in contentment, as I let myself slip into the sea.

Finally submerged, I floated for a while, entranced by the underwater soap operas being performed before me. I thrilled at the neon vividness of the ornate wrasse, as it shot between the larger pebbles, and I floated after small schools of annular sea bream, their almost translucent iridescent bodies flexing beneath where I hung in the sea above them. After a while, my submerged ears became accustomed to the clicking of the little sea bream, and I watched as they snapped at each other and other passing fish (including me). On one occasion, two little fish performed a strange ballet, swooping away from each other, before turning, dashing back, and locking mouths, with an audible snap, a performance they repeated again and again. I could not tell if they were flirting or fighting but, after watching them for a while, I thought that I should give them some privacy, and I drifted on.

A small red ragworm floated free of its tiny pebble cave, where I had seen it crawl a little earlier, and I held myself back as it was attacked by the little fish around me. It twisted and turned, as if suspended in mid-air, its centipede-like feet flailing, before it finally made its way back to the sea bed. There, presumably feeling immensely relieved after its ordeal, it wriggled itself between stones for safety and did not reemerge. A tiger-striped comber, not much bigger than my index finger, saw me, turned and swam back to the shade of an overhanging pebble, and its disguise blended it perfectly into its sanctuary. Another little fish, with brown frills like a flamenco dancer, looked up at me, and we stared at each other for a while. Slowly, it opened its tiny mouth, either in amazement, or as if it thought that it was a much larger creature, and might attack me. To spare it the embarrassment, should it attempt the feat and fail, I turned politely and swam away.

As the sun arced around the bay, and disappeared behind towering grey thunder clouds, it felt like the time had come to move on for the day. I emerged from the sea, feeling that familiar sea-salt tingle on my skin, which brought back memories of my childhood, learning to swim in the sea off the coast of Devon. Driving back along the coastal road, we spotted a sign pointing to the Durrell White House, and I turned off to see it. The house is more overlooked by other houses than it was when Lawrence and Nancy Durrell made it their home in the 1930s, but sitting on the rocks beside the terrace, it was not hard to imagine how it might have felt when they were there. Across the little bay of Kalami, and away beyond the headland dotted with olive and cypress trees, a fork of lightning split the sky, followed some time later by a far off rumble of thunder. It was time to go.

Shelling out for the underground

Margate, on the northern coast of Kent, is an unusual place. On a sunny day, and they do occur, the beach around which it is set presents an appealing arc of sand, along which a glittering sea laps, attractively. To one side, the striking Turner Contemporary art gallery - a modern addition to the waterfront, and an attempt to trigger wider investment - draws the eye and a lot of visitors who, but for its existence, would probably have come nowhere near this otherwise somewhat dilapidated seaside town.

This is partly because, behind the gallery and seafront, lurks Old Margate. Bits of it, without question, are attractive and interesting, and blue plaques record the home of John Le Mesurier and Hattie Jacques (whose birthplace is also marked, here), and the building where Eric Morecambe and his wife held their wedding reception. Other parts of Old Margate are, regrettably, more problematic. Like many British seaside towns, with the rise in package flights to sunnier climes, Margate suffered from the decline in "traditional" seaside holidays, and its descent towards (if not downright into) borderline poverty is etched on its crumbling buildings and neglected spaces.

Walking away from the sea front, past buddleia-bedecked derelict sites awaiting money or inspiration, or both, the atmosphere, whilst not exactly threatening, is nevertheless somewhat less than welcoming. All towns and cities have their slightly unloved, but ultimately utilitarian, areas and Margate is hardly to be blamed for appearing to have more than its fair share of them. Nevertheless, the further from the sea we walked, the less sensible the plan that we had seemed to be.

Eventually, the road we were seeking came into view, and we turned left, climbing up a sloping and otherwise entirely residential-looking street. A little way up, on the right hand side, was the entrance to the building we were looking for, if "building" is quite the right word. We had arrived at the "Shell Grotto", an underground passageway, in essence, lined with shells; an exceedingly strange attraction, in an extremely unlikely location.

After paying our entrance fee, we wandered into a small back room, which contained background information on the grotto, such as it is possible to ascertain, which does not appear to be much. For example, one of the signs posed the questions, "Why was it built? When? Who by?" and answered them concisely with, "We don't know."

Descending a small stairway at the back of this room, we found ourselves in the grotto proper. A shell-lined circular underground corridor with an arched roof leads to a small atrium with a domed ceiling, through which daylight enters. Beyond this, a further passage gives access to rectangular room known somewhat sensationally as the "altar chamber", one end of which is blank cement, a testament to bomb damage from the Second World War.

As with a lot of the Grotto, definite information is sparse, so whether it was part of some religious temple, or just somebody's crazy whim is impossible to say; the grotto appears to have been discovered (or, at any rate, its existence made public) in 1835, but other than that, the rest is largely speculation, including just how old it actually is. Whatever the reason, date or individuals behind its creation, it remains an arrestingly odd place, and definitely worth a visit. Just don't go expecting to learn anything very definitive, other than perhaps what it is like to be in a shell-lined tunnel underground.

As I was going to St. Ives...

      As I was going to St. Ives,

      I met a man with seven wives,

      Each wife had seven sacks,

      Each sack had seven cats,

      Each cat had seven kits:

      Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,

      How many were there going to St. Ives?

So runs the famous riddle. I suppose it still counts as a riddle even if there is no clear or widely accepted answer to it, but that doesn't make it any less irritating. It also quite neatly sums up some of my objections to mathematics, as as subject, an aversion which probably dates back to my school years. I can still vividly recall, as an eleven year old boy, being given an impromptu maths test that included the question, "If it takes four minutes to boil one egg, how long does it take to boil eight eggs?" Naively assuming that, in a maths lesson, it was a maths, rather than a cookery, question, I dutifully multiplied four by eight to answer "32 minutes". Of course, the answer was four minutes, because you can boil all the eggs at the same time, not that boiling even a single egg was something I think I had done at that age. Any possible interest I may have had in maths died that moment, and thereafter I considered the subject to be annoying, tricksy and deceitful.

All of which is a surprisingly negative way of introducing a post about St. Ives, the little seaside town on the north coast of Cornwall, England; a place that I visited for the first time in 2015, and almost immediately fell in love with. I had been to Cornwall several times before, and had even done some volunteer work near Penzance on the south coast, but this was the first occasion that I had been to this part of the county. St. Ives is unashamedly a tourist village, and every Friday and Saturday the roads are jammed as one group of holidaymakers swaps over with the next set. Despite this, the place managed to accommodate all of these tourists without feeling overly spoiled.

It has come a long way from its origins, as a sleepy fishing village, but there is nevertheless a clear sense of a real community remaining beneath the seasonal tide of emmets (the Cornish name for tourists, from an old English word for ants - the logic speaks for itself). For many, the draw of St. Ives is the bright blue sea, and its warm sandy beaches. St. Ives is surrounded by bays, each of which offers something different for different people. For families who wish to sunbathe and paddle, there is the broad expanse of Porthminster Beach, with its cafes and restaurant. To the north west, there is Porthmeor Beach, which draws surfers and bodyboarders. Around the natural promontory known as The Island, between the two, there are three or four other little sandy alcoves, which slowly fill up with holiday-makers.

The town itself is full of the usual shops and restaurants that one would expect of the seaside, but St. Ives also has an outpost of the Tate Gallery, as well as a museum dedicated to the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, who used to live there (some of whose works are also dotted around the town). Tucked away in the winding streets of the town itself are dozens of little art galleries and shops selling a wide variety of attractive oddments. It feels like a creative place, and one where people are encouraged to be themselves.

I had had a hectic and stressful time before I arrived, and so I was more than content to swim in the sea, and wander the streets, never once getting back into my car. Slowly, over the following week, I began to feel myself unwinding, and the taste of salt water on my lips brought back pleasant memories of childhood holidays by the sea. One day, splashing about in the water, I was startled to see the head of an equally curious harbour seal in close proximity, which soon disappeared beneath the waves, leaving me uncertain as to what I had seen. Later that evening, walking along Smeaton's Pier, I was reassured to see two of these lovely animals rolling languorously in the shallow waters beneath. St. Ives felt very much at ease, with itself and its temporary inhabitants, and that sense of relaxation was exactly what I needed. 

Puffin away

The small island of Skomer lies of the south west coast of Wales, and is accessed via a small fishing trawler, refitted to hold a few hardy souls. The journey is not a long one, but when the sea swells, it can feel like a reasonably arduous endeavour. As the little boat, which has been bobbing quite wildly in the water, rounds a particular headland, it wrestles wth an evil-looking swirl of water, and sways alarmingly from one side to the other. The extent of the tipping is so wide that, at one point, I genuinely wondered whether it would right itself, or if this is how shipwrecks feel, when they begin.

All being well, however, in a little under half an hour, you arrive at the foot of a set of steps cut into the cliff on Skomer. At the top of them, the warden greets you, and sketches out the island's points of interest and, before you know it, you are wandering among the last of the bluebells, seeking out the puffins. The puffins are what makes Skomer famous, and a Mecca for bird-lovers.

The island is not large, but as one starts to explore it, it feels like the chances of seeing a puffin, other than as an ambiguous black dot, bobbing away in the sea some distance away, might not be great. As is often the way with such sights, you start by doing your best to appreciate the initial somewhat unsatisfactory views. "Well, well," you think, slightly disappointedly, as you squint at some kind of seabird, no bigger than a pin-prick away in the sea, "Now I can say I've seen a puffin."

Then, you round a corner, and walk down a path between the burrows, and you see one of these enigmatic creatures, less than half a metre away. When this happens, you forget the rough sea crossing (and the inevitable replay of it that awaits you to get back to the mainland) and the vague sightings of earlier. They are such familiar birds, that being in such close proximity to them - and there are several of them close by, pottering around, sometimes posing for photos - slightly takes you by surprise. It's almost like coming face to face with a famous film star or musician, except these birds seem to have no objection to having their picture taken.

The puffins of Skomer are, and no other word quite seems to do them justice, charming. Up on the cliffs, where their burrows are, they stomp around, quite oblivious to the snap-happy visitors, like a group of sad-faced clowns going about their daily lives. Every now and then, one of the puffins that has been flying around the little bay comes in for a somewhat awkward landing. As they appear to crash land - every time - it is hard to resist anthropomorphising them, and imagining them thinking "Oh, no! Oh, no!" as they skitter to an inelegant stop among the clover, before they right themselves with dignity and stomp off, as if nothing had happened.

The passing of summer

As the northern hemisphere spins on into autumn and then winter, it can be strangely hard to recall the sensations of the past seasons. For example, it always amazes me, in the full heat of the summer, to be walking along pavements that, six months before, might have been buried deep under seemingly indestructible snow and ice. I know it happened, and yet it feels ludicrously improbable.

Similarly, as we dig out our warm sweaters and overcoats, and draw the curtains against the encroaching dark of earlier and earlier nights, it can be difficult the remember just a few short weeks ago. Back when the summer enveloped us, when shorts and a t-shirt were all you could bear to wear, and the evenings seemed to last for hours. Yet soon it will be the chill of an icy wind that nips the ears, rather than the burn of the scorching sun, and we will pull warm woollen hats down tight against the freezing air.

When I was a child, the end of the summer, and the inevitable return to the cold drudgery of school, always felt like a betrayal; as if, rather than simply having had an enjoyable time that could now be put away and left, I had been teased with a tempting yet unattainable happy place of sun and laughter, which was then cruelly taken away from me.

Those joyful summer days of childhood are still there, though, in some indefinable way, stuck in my memory with the people – parents, grandparents and aunts – who are no longer around. The taste of the sea water, and the rough embrace of a beach towel, and the ruffle of hair being dried sort of against my will; even the wince of biting on a crisp that had got dusted with sand, these sensations live on still.

Sometimes, it’s a photograph that brings the memories, or sometimes that odd salty tang of the sea, mingled with the wet smell of seaweed, and then those summer holidays of years gone by rematerialise. The splash of the tide and the friendly rasp of the sand on toes, the waving pinching arms of a freshly captured crab, and the slowly sinking sun that, for just a moment, looked like it would never completely set.