My friends think I’m mad. (Yes, I know, I know.) But I’m not, actually – or at least, in respect of my habit of sea-bathing. Because I happen to have the ocean at the end of my road, on the South Coast – a ten-minute saunter away. And between around the beginning of June and late October, unless the red flag’s actually flying, I’m in there. Not for hours – just five or ten minutes or so. Ideally at lunchtime, with a snack and a bottle of water – or maybe tea-time, depending on high tide.
‘A change is as good as a rest,’ we’re often told. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that; nothing quite rivals a good lie-down (preferably for two weeks, right around now, with a stack of books to read). But over the years I’ve learned to embrace change in a way that I never would have expected when I was growing up. I loathed change. I wanted everything to be the same, always and forever. As disasters unfolded (my mother’s death, my father selling our beloved childhood home, other relationships unravelling), I realised: change was pretty unavoidable.
Somehow you don’t expect to return from a goddaughter’s wedding jaunt to Mallorca to find that the nights back in Blighty are even more sweltering than they were in Deia. Now, I’m not good in the heat. During the day, I cope by moving very s-l-o-w-l-y, glugging what feels like gallons of water – and if I’m too hot at night, I simply can’t sleep. Almost nothing I hate more than tossing and turning, glued to my sheets.
Many years ago I read a book which made a deep impression on me. It was called The Healing Power of Illness, by a German doctor called Rüdiger Dahlke. Highly controversial, it suggested that when we get sick – or even have an accident – it’s not just random, but we’re in some way responsible for what’s happened to us. (The book, incidentally, can still be sourced via Amazon.)