I was born at the beach…well, I say that, but it wasn’t quite
like Aphrodite coming out of the waves, more a fairly standard birth in a
hospital about a mile from the peaceful coastline of Great Yarmouth in Norfolk.
And since then, despite a fairly crippling fear of boats
& the sea (nope, never worked out where that came from), I never seem to
have strayed far from the sea’s edge.
From the rocky Caribbean island of Curaçao, (which my mum
often tells me was barely 11 miles long and 3 miles wide), my home
from the age of three months:
To early family holidays on the beaches of the Shetland
Islands, a world away from the brilliant blue seas off South America, but no
less evocative:
From family Christmases spent in Penang to escape the heat
of Bangkok to group holidays (and woeful attempts to body board) off the wild
shores of Cornwall, hunting for King Arthur’s crown under Tintagel castle and
rock-pooling for shrimp:
And then as a grown up, my own beaches, the smooth pebbles
of Brighton on weekend escapes from the big smoke, to a tragic summer job in
Ibiza, the memories of which burn almost as bright as the sunsets I saw there:
And finally, full circle, back to Norfolk for a recent
retreat on the very same beach nearby to which I was born, early morning seal
sightings and building a line of sandcastles along the golden mile:
I’ve tried to incorporate the colours from Great Yarmouth
into the latest CAL I’m working on, the lovely Last Dance on the Beach from
Scheepjes in memory of the crochet designer Marinke Slump, sadly lost to
depression a few years ago.
It’s a new experience for me, working with a muted palette,
but after countless hours spent matching the yarns to my most recent beach
photographs, I can feel the sea in each stitch I make, and I find a measure of
the solace I found on the shore itself, my toes in the sand, and the waves
rippling over the pebbles.
Of course, I couldn’t be me without another side to the
calm, so I’ve also been working on tiny sandcastles and beach umbrellas, in
memory of the other side of Great Yarmouth; the bright lights and chirping
sounds of the beachfront arcades, the smell of fish & chips in the air and
the shiny hubbub of a town come to life for the season.
Oh but we do like to be beside the seaside,
we do like to be beside the sea..!
