SUMMER SEASON: Novelist David Park charts the changing nature of a day at the beach, from the buckets of the past to the bodyboards of today.
For almost two decades the closest I came to sitting on a beach was a Brian Wilson song on the radio. Perhaps it was because of that inherent fear hidden deep in the male psyche of having sand kicked in my face, or exposing a skeleton torso that looked like a bleached X-ray. More probably, however, it was the consequence of having red hair and a milk-bottle white pigmentation that overheated at even the most languid brush of the sun's lips. The sun always seemed able to search out, not so much an Achilles' heel, as the points of elbows, the backs of knees, the tender tips of ears, anywhere in fact the protective cream missed.
It was the arrival of two children that initiated a new experience of beach life, propelled by the fact that even the world's least exotic beach can keep a child blissfully engaged for more hours than any other location known to man. But something very strange had happened to the culture of beach life during the long years of my estrangement. In my own childhood, the ritual of going to the beach was accompanied only by a tartan woollen rug, usually red; swimming togs wrapped in towels like fat sausage rolls; a bucket and spade; and sweating sandwiches wrapped in tin foil.
In the new face of modern beach technology these sepia memories look as jauntily amateurish as photographs of Mallory's equipment for his attempt on Everest. Now everything has been transformed by technology and is bound by the most rigid codes of conduct. Not to have the correct accoutrements is to invite the undisguised scorn of your fellow beach users and bring shame on your offspring.
As with all modern expeditions, a lightweight tent is de rigueur. These are small, brightly coloured contraptions, purchasable from all good supermarket chains, and when erected on their frame look like little pods. Side pockets are weighted with sand to stop the wind lifting them and the provision of a zip door prevents the gymnastic contortions that were previously involved in changing. As beaches are bitterly territorial, a windbreak is needed, both to fulfil its natural function, but also to mark out space in the same spirit that gold-rush miners staked out their claims. You will also, of course, have a coolbox, possibly a portable barbecue, and collapsible chairs.
Entertainment is a vital component of modern beach life and this will necessitate a set of boules, two wooden bats and a vividly coloured, hard little ball that resembles a gob stopper. A kite, preferably in the shape of an exotic bird or fish, will win approval, but a frisbee is definitely passe and has been for years. A cricket bat and stumps will simply label you as an Enid Blyton family whose coolbox probably contains lashings of ginger beer. Only the very young and the geriatric do paddling anymore. Everyone else does bodyboarding. This requires a board (only have a picture of a dolphin on it if you are under nine years of age) and a black wetsuit. The wetsuit is my favourite piece of beach equipment. It keeps you warm, it hides the worst defects of your body and it makes you secretly feel like an assassin in a James Bond film. The only drawbacks are the wrestle to slither in and out of them, and the expensive rate at which your children grow out of theirs and require a bigger size.
Bodyboarding involves waiting for a feisty wave and throwing yourself on the board at precisely the right moment for it to carry you to shore. Okay, so it's a poor man's surfing but it does allow you the chance to stand staring moodily out to sea as if scanning the horizon for the perfect wave. Wrap-around sunglasses will enhance this effect.
The beach, of course, is no indulgent frittering of time for a writer. All human life is here. Idiosyncratic and aberrant behaviour are everywhere. On a Cornish beach a man in lime-green shorts throws stones at the sea for an hour, not throwing stones in the sea to see them skim, but throwing at the sea. On a beach in Brittany a sweating, overweight father lathers the air with grunts as he shows his children how to dig the biggest hole in the world. An audience gathers; mothers shoo their children away for fear they will fall into it. Soon only his head and shoulders are visible. When he can dig no more he collapses at its side, presiding proudly over his work and glinting in the sun like a golden Buddha.
But there are other things you see and feel on the beach, timeless things, perfect in themselves like tiny shells: a mother enveloping her shivering child in a towel; a grandmother tiptoeing the water, skirt hems bunched in her hands; the family sharing of food seasoned with the briny tang of the sea. Suddenly, after all, you realise that in the ritual there is something here that endures beyond the outward show, and you remember Larkin's evocation and celebration of the beach in his poem To the Sea:
If the worst
Of flawless weather is our falling short,
It may be that through habit these do best,
Coming to water clumsily undressed
Yearly; teaching their children by a sort
Of clowning; helping the old, too, as they ought.