Waving in the waves

It might start with being able to swim. Which I can.
It certainly comes with the waves being the friendly kind coming from a body of water which is upwards of cold.

 I started in Watford municipal swimming pool. On a Friday night . it was our family outing.
A swim at the end of week in a big tiled Victorian pool. Smelling high of chlorine. With fears of verrucas from the slippery floors. But with the promise of a visit to the chip shop on the way home. With dripping hair into collars and threats of amputation if we got our fingers, shiny with deep fried potatoes crunchy with salt and malt vinegar, on the smooth leather seats of the Jaguar Mark 2.

I believe my first encounter with waves would have been in Cornwall at a place called Mullion Cove where we had one of those summer holidays with bright weather and tomato sandwiches and orange squash.

The Murray gang

Shortly thereafter, we headed south to the Mediterranean. In an attempt to keep three children wet and healthy for a few months a year, my parents bought a shoebox with bunk beds and a convertible sofa, with a short walk on unfinished roads down to the Port Pelegrí beach on the Costa Brava in Spain. There, it was basically swimming all day interspersed with bread rolls filled with huge slices of tomato and an Orangina.
It was summers of tan lines and prune like fingers. Groups of friends picking up the same games every year, espadrilles, “Hero” apricot jam and reading Tolkien, or other captivating writers, under the beach umbrella.

The Pena Golosa Gang

 When I was young,  I decided that with success would come two things. Shoes that were made for me. And a swimming pool. I’m not sure much as changed. Maybe buying an airline ticket without having to see if the fare includes a suitcase. And being able to give indiscriminately to worthwhile charities.

But I would like to add a piece of sea. Warm, blue with waves.

I have swum in the waves of Caribbean, the Indian , the  Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans.

I don’t like roller coasters. Magic Mountain would be close to toothache on my list of favorite things.

Standing In waist high water, hair wet and pushed back off the face, watching the waves coming towards you.
Small ones, big ones, gentle ones, shy ones, curving ones; cowards, bullies, and flirts.

With anything other than a whisper, you have to choose. Dive into it’s body and let the wave break on top of you. Take a big leap and try to lift yourself above it’s arch. It becomes a game of sorts. An everlasting game, because the waves have every possibility in their massive arsenal. No way you win this game. You will always be taken off guard. But as you and the waves do your dance you can jete
 like Nureyev, leap like Olga Korbut; sail through the water like Robin Goodfellow, fly through the waves like Amelia Earhart.

One big blue watery circus tent.

Waves allow us to be giants.

One wave at a time.

Tropical musings

Hawaii.

There is an apostrophe in there somewhere. There are apostrophes in almost every word.
I am staying on a road called Mo’okua street. It is a short street. With two churches. And because one of the churches is “ Seventh Day Adventists” they take the Saturday sabbath and give the Sunday over the “ Hope Christians” who stick with the other Sabbath, Sunday. So it is short street with three churches. There are loads of churches here in this small town of Kailua. Probably another apostrophe.
Lots of reasons why I am here. Most of them are as interesting as deciding whether to take the 4.10 or the 5.20 to Ruislip. So, let’s just say, I’m happily here.
Lots of Americans come on holiday. I understand why. There is a Walgreens and a Wholefoods. There are banks with drive-in tellers. There are many Starbucks and the police cars have blue lights. There are also mangoes hanging high in the trees and papayas sticking out like collars from straight trunks. And most things smell. The hibiscus don’t. They just overwhelm you with colour. But the plumeria and the tuberose whack it to round very corner.
I am on the windward side of the island of Oahu. The side that Barack Obama stays on when he comes here for Christmas. The bay of Kailua. If the ocean wasn’t so constantly moving , I could say that I have swum in the same water in which he he body-surfed. Which would make me related somehow. Which, in these strangest of times, would be comforting somehow.

I am staying with a very old friend who goes to work, so I am leading a silent life. Apart from the “good morning’s “ I throw out to the people I pass on the water’s edge as I walk by, I could be in a nunnery. A nunnery where I cut up the aforementioned mango and papaya for a late breakfast and  wander outside to the lanai ( that’s a deck) in a swimming costume and a sarong. Maybe that’s why there are so many churches here on Mo’Okua Street.

Mangoes hanging , just out of reach.

This morning, After my morning walk and my morning swim, I went on my turquoise bike to the farmers market. The proper farmer’s market. I went to another one on Sunday but I am assured it is now bent toward the tourists with it’s many stands of prepared food and angel jewelry and CBD oils. This farmers market was for just one hour behind the police station. It had six stalls. And the local farmers brought only what they had in their fields. Nothing fancy.
I bought sweet onions, spinach, peas, apple bananas, papaya, mangoes, small peppers, lettuce, aubergine, coriander, lemons, limes and some tropical flowers.

 I carried it all back on my turquoise bike and luckily the cars were very tolerant of my weaving.

The cars behave here a little like trams....when they spot you on the side of the road, they assume you want to cross and they stop.  Traffic jams are three cars in a row. Going fast is over 25 mph.
Warmth allows you to turn off the busy bit of your brain. It lets you put on the same pair of pink striped shorts day after day, let’s you look at clouds long enough to see in which direction they are traveling, allows you to take half an hour to eat a papaya.

When Barack was here for those holidays, I am sure he had a lot of phone calls and e-mails. But, even though we are distantly related by the same ocean waves, my world is very quiet.
I have A.A.Gill to remind me what brilliant writing is. I have Jojoba oil in my hair. And Kiehl’s sunscreen on my skin.

Mangoes, papayas. Waves.....

... that’ll do me.