Splash

Wowee, had a huge adrenaline rush this morning. I jumped into the sea in my pyjamas.

In other words, I did the Boxing Day Dip, in aid of the NCT. It was fantastic. Our team of four raised over £400 and we get to keep 80%, the Lion's club takes 20 and that goes to local charities anyway. Not bad :-)

It was just such a rush, we waited and waited in a sports hall, had to parade about showing off our costumes, tension building a bit like on a rollercoaster going uphill slowly .... then they made us parade along the street, rollercoaster stops at the top .....and finally run down to the sea ........ Brrrr!

Some friends who live within shouting distance of that bit of beach (its a drive away for us) were kind enough to make me sausage sandwiches afterwards. Just what I needed, yum.

I am beginning to rediscover why I live near the sea. I moved here because I loved it, and spent many happy hours tromping up and down, there's huge variety here from Bamburgh right down to Whitby. Then early in 2006 I had a huge and messy falling out with someone I had thought was a very close friend. Ouch. What's that got to do with it? Well, quite simply that I'd done a huge amount of my tromping either with her or described to her after as she'd have done the same tromp on another occasion, she loved it aswell, she moved here just before I did to be near it and I followed ... plus some of the stuff that happened when we fell out had seaside tromping associations, I'm not going to go into any details on a public blog but I will talk about the pain I felt whenever I had to even drive past, nevermind voluntarily get out of the car and walk for fun! I've even spent a fair amount of time on rightmove.com in an attempt to get away from here!

It's been almost two years, time, that great healer, marches on. Having Rosie has helped enormously too, but mainly it has been by the sheer grace of God that I have survived this far relatively unscathed, not much more than a predictable bout of ante/postnatal depression that I'm beginning to pull out of now to show for it, and actually a much stronger sound mind.

So, I can once again face the sea without it hurting, and if I bumped into her whilst I couldn't exactly go 'oh hello!' I'd be able to think 'Whaaatevvvvver' (huge huge respect here to separated parents who have to still see the other partner to hand their children over! This was just a friend and I couldn't have coped with seeing her). In terms of associations, the coast itself no longer haunts me with memories, it's been a long time, I'm almost healed.

As a result of this I'm rediscovering the joys of a red sunset reflected in the wet sand, a flock of turnstones plodging about, the roar of the waves breaking on a rough day, or even the joys of jumping in fully clothed in the winter to raise money :-))))