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We were a bit less tired and the weather was a lot better and so the holiday could begin. And what a terrific time I had hanging out with my girls all day long. My daughter loves a sand pit and Woolacombe Bay is essentially a huge one, which, at this time of year has next to no one using it.
We were here last year during my dad’s 80th birthday celebrations and it was so full of human beings that it was like a living Hell. But we had a lot of space today and made the most of it. Phoebe was keen to scramble up the bank and uncharacteristically I did the same and then showed her increasingly dangerous ways to come down. We tried sliding, then rolling and then jumping. Phoebe literally threw herself into it, laughing all the way, coming out unscathed. Realistically it was probably more dangerous for my old bones (and I was doing proper long jumps, unlike that useless 2 year old) but I didn’t hurt myself either.
I felt very happy being allowed to release the inner child (who let’s face it was always bubbling under the surface anyway) and lamented the days wasted with work when I could have been playing with this tiny idiot. Of course, all the work means that the leisure time means so much more and also if I spent all my days rolling around in sand then my family would eventually starve to death. And as always, as happy as I was, I still had to live in my brain which keeps conjuring up unlikely and terrifying ways in which something will go wrong and this magical happiness will evaporate. What if a gang of child-snatchers on quad bikes drove up the beach and stole my child away? What if the tractors that were doing work on the slope behind us were driven erratically and flipped over and squashed us. Everything felt so perfect that it seemed inevitable that something brutally horrible was about to happen. And I wondered why our brains can’t just let us enjoy ourselves and waste so much of our energy imagining unlikely disasters. And why was my brain not making me worry about the rambunctious games I was playing down the sloping sand - which were actually mildly dangerous?
But not having anything to do but play and read (when my playmate was asleep) and hang out with my amazing wife, drinking sparkling wine whilst watching the sun set from our balcony felt like Heaven. We’ve both been so busy this year that watching three episodes of Better Call Saul on the bounce seemed decadent beyond belief. I think we might just stay here forever.
