I don’t think there is a single place in England that I know better than those 6 feet of sand in font of a shed in Broadstairs.
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Six Feet of England
I went home earlier this week, back to the chalk to see my parents.
The weather was fine so we went down the beach hut for a couple of hours. I don’t think there is a single place in England that I know better than those 6 feet of sand in font of a shed in Broadstairs.
The hours, over years, of my life spent watching the tide. The way cliff shadows move across the beach, which wind direction whips waves over the sea wall. Details change, but the place itself remains the same.
When I was much younger, late 90’s early 00’s maybe, a man would fly a red diamond kite with a bow tie tail. He would come down early in the morning and tie it to the pier. It would fly up in the sky above the bay, all day. Above the cliff top hundreds of metres out to sea. When the sun went and the evening drew in, he would come back and reel it in. Pack it down and go home. I don’t know who he was, why he flew the kite, or whether he was even around during the day to see it soaring high. But it was an act of public kindness, a magical act that brought joy.
Over 20 years later I think about that kite. Just as I think of the birthday parties with friends from school. Mums and Dads sitting on deckchairs chatting whilst we ran about in the summer sun. Later birthdays like my 16th, my friend Steve sitting in the hut the whole time with a can of lager and book. Pier jumping and iron maiden through a tinny portable speaker.
The summer mum entered our beach hut in the fancy dress competition with a little mermaid theme. My cousins coloured in paper starfish whilst mum staple gunned green and blue paper seaweed to the doors. Later that day but before the judging it poured down. As children and adults sheltered in the hut the colour from the crepe paper began to run in the rain. My brother’s blonde hair dyed green, mine and my cousins’ back a pale blue.
Sand castle competitions revealing budding talents. Technically minded personalities and Organisational skills. Bossy 8 year olds directing others into roles that suited people’s strengths and ages — you fill buckets, you pack sand, and we’ll all dig the trenches. The white noise rhythm of waves masking the hubbub of humanity around us on a busy day.
Sunny afternoons with family members long gone. My Grandad in shirt, tie, and trousers sitting on a towel. Running his hand through the sand like he was casting a spell. And how without fail, each visit this magic would reveal exactly enough change from the sand for all us youngsters to have an ice cream each.
My mum and I went looking for cowries along the shore this week. You cannot go to the beach at low tide without the engaging in a hunt – it is tradition. Something happens when you comb for tiny shells along the strandline. The beach dissolves, what was just sand, with attention resolves into its individual grains, shells and flecks of seaweed. The enormity of it all creeps in.
The beach is a dynamic place; always moving, shifting and changing. It breathes with the tides, reshaping and refreshing itself anew twice a day, every single day. I found 3 cowries but Mum found loads. 40 shells in the hut pot so far this season.
Sitting in the blazing sunshine I ask my Dad if he remembered the days we sat on wet spring mornings with heavy drizzle after my operation. Not a single soul apart from us, sitting side by side, drinking tea from polystyrene cups watching the rain and the tides.
The beach is a special place where one world brushes against another. There are no greater pleasures in my life than watching the sea come in. Sitting in a chair and picking a spot along the beach and watching. Wondering when the water will breach an abandoned sandfort wall, or overtop a sandbar and run down into a tidal pool. Whilst time and tide waits for no man, this man will happily wait for the tides.
But more than anything, the most special thing about the beach is beyond the land and beyond the sea. It is where the sky meets the stars. The horizon.
It is hard to speak about this with people who grew up amidst city or hills. But I find a deep peace in the presence of that vast line. My eyes, and my mind, rest upon it and relax.
The edge of the world, as far as the eye can see, a boundary between the knowable and the mysterious. Everything between you and it is knowable. When I look at the horizon the complexity of life fades away, leaving a line on which everything can be settled. A surface on which to hang all existence.
This week, sitting in a chair at the hut, I was struck by how this shoreline and distant horizon have been constants in my life. I chased the tides and sketched castles as a child. Now, as an adult, I trace those same lines. Memories washed up like shells at the shore. A kite soaring high, birthday laughter, and all storms I’ve sat and weathered. I realise that upon that 6ft of England, I came to know the world.
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