Meg Clothier has sailed from England to Alaska, worked as a journalist, published two novels and run a London park café. Here she explains why she likes nothing better than getting cold and wet at the seaside, because then she can get warm and dry, drink gin and play Risk.
I’ve just been abroad for the first time since the pandemic, and yes, the almond croissants are still indescribably perfect and the Kir is still perfectly sweet. The sky was blue, the sea was warm … but do you know what I missed?
I missed cocooning myself in a brash red dryrobe and feeling 100pct comme il faut. I missed my wetsuit, which means even though I’m a rubbish swimmer, I can float for hours like a rubbery mermaid. I missed that it didn’t, shockingly, pour with rain, not even for one paltry afternoon, so I couldn’t have a monster pub lunch, write whimsical postcards and have a razz on the arcades.
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This August, I’ll rebalance. This August, I’ll head for the same stretch of coastline I’ve been visiting since before I was born.
A single-track lane winds seawards from the main road and for a mile or two you’re buried between green hedges (you need low blood-pressure and solid reversing skills) until you crest one last rise and the Channel opens out below you, grey or glinting, depending on the meteorological gods. When we were little, my brother and I would shriek-sing, ‘I can see the sea, I can see the sea, eee-iii-ad-io, I can see the sea,’ for the sheer joy of it, and this year - how not at all embarrassed my children will be - I’ll be doing exactly the same.
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The magic of arriving in British seaside-holiday-land never fades.
Gulls and salt and seaweed. The smell of frying fish and fat chips. Tubby phalanxes of toddlers in lifejackets, leaning over the quay, trying to catch crabs. Groaning children dragging boogie boards up the cliff-path, bedazzled by swell and spray. Teenagers riding the ebb downriver to where the waves break lustily as the sun turns westwards.
I will not be wearing a white linen sun-dress. I will not be sipping oysters. (Although don’t let me stop you, if that’s your thing…). I’ll be savouring a 99-flake in the lee of my raincoat, thrilled to be part of the proud British seaside tradition of having a fine old time, whatever the weather. Come hail or high water, I’ll see you there!
Meg’s latest book Sea Fever– a charming seaside miscellany – is out now in paperback.
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