Wednesday 11 January 2012

Low Tide05:36 (0.50m)
High Tide11:53 (2.40m)
Low Tide17:35 (0.70m)
High Tide23:58 (2.60m)
Sea temperature: 6.6
Sea conditions: very calm
Weather: clear, strange skies, no breeze 
Joined by: No one
Topics of conversation:
Strange skies - as DK and I met by the huts a strange light grew in the sky, neither of us had seen anything like it before. The sun was rising over the sea and the light appeared directly opposite the sunrise, in the west. It rose up through a cloud and as we stared the spectrum of colours increased, suggesting it could be a rainbow, but it was through a cloud and as the sun hadn't risen properly so it grew and rose in front of us. At it's peak there was a slight suggestion of an arc, so it must have been the sunrise rainbow although there was no rain, nor has there been since. I didn't really get a good photo of it for the same reason that I didn't get a photo of the northern lights when I saw them - I was too mesmerised.

Return to the waves - it's been my longest break for a year (when I was away) as the catalogue of recent health problems has kept me away. The last month hasn't been great and a combination of birthday blues and holiday indulgence certainly allowed the lurgie etc. to take hold and the final nail in the coffin brought amusement to some - I pulled an arse muscle, I had no idea it was possible nor how painful it could be! Even sitting down was hard for a day or so. Today is the first day I've felt myself this year, but it is only the 11th. The sun and sea (and a dose of DK) are the best medicine.
Shelley's death and cremation on the beach. The Constable is writing a poem about him and this had previously led to a discussion about cremating bodies on boats. We used to have a party in the village every year when an old boat was set alight and sent out to sea to burn, but it no longer happens, I'm not sure why (some kind of H&S regulation I expect). Whilst my body will go to the Cambridge School of Anatomy, as per the previous post, I decided that if I did drown on one of our early morning swims that it would be a fitting way to be sent off and demanded that DK make note. Perhaps when The Constable has finished his poem he'd allow it to be blogged - the story of Shelley's  death is wonderful:
Having a romantic notion of the sea he'd bought and 'pimped' a boat, adding extra sails and so on so that when he was caught in a seasonal storm off the coast of Italy the boat was lost and Shelley and all on board were drowned. Their bodies washed up some time later and the story goes that his friends and companions (I believe Byron and Trelawny were the main instigators) cremated him where he was found (due to the state of the body and their desire for the dramatic). They fetched frankincense and myrrh from the church to throw on the body and satisfied the more pagan side of Shelley with wine. It is said that as the flames took hold his brain was seen to boil but that his heart did not even burn. One of the assembled, again I think it was Byron, plunged his hand into Shelley's chest and retrieved the heart so that it could be returned to Mary. And all this before breakfast...

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