Beach Trip Trouble Part 2
So...following my last blog post where I said I probably wouldn't do a beach trip again any time soon with baby... I did in fact find myself at the beach but it wasn't a planned 'trip.' Considering we've had some lovely weather lately too, I did in fact land up on the beach on a rather rainy day a couple of weeks back!
What happened was: I didn’t want to watch baby pulling the curtains or trying to play with the toilet seat anymore, so I decided to take her to a local kids cafe with some soft play to burn off her climbing energy for an hour. Well, we arrived and it was closed that day. Silly old me didn’t check the website or anything first so I found myself standing in the rain wondering what else I could possibly do with a fidgety tot in a seaside town? The only answer that seemed glaringly obvious was to take her down to the beach. I convinced myself at this point that it’d be alright for 10 minutes as it was only spitting (ever the optimist, considering death-eater-style clouds were starting to sprout across the sky!) I paid half hour for parking (more optimism,) coated us both in our macs, armed with a blanket and a brolly, and ventured onto the sand. Well, first of all, we practically sat at the bottom of the sea wall steps because I wasn’t wearing particularly sensible sand shoes. By this, I mean I was wearing some of my favourite green wedges and wearing wedges on sand made me emulate the look of a newborn foal staggering around. Except I was additionally trying not to drop my child or blanket or brolly. I am just over 5 foot, so carrying all of these things at once certainly presented some difficulty too- by the time I was at the bottom of the steps I think our tot was probably clinging down by my kneecaps somewhere.
It was one of those moments where I was hugely relieved there was nobody else around apart from a lifeguard in a Hut. Oh- and yeah I was casually wearing tights and a skirt- standard beachwear.
Once child and blanket were down, I then put the brolly in position. However, disaster struck! My beautiful brolly was abducted by the wind almost instantly, and it started roly-polying across the sand. I started to stagger after it: if anyone could see me from the sea wall I must’ve looked like a drunk woman running after an invisible dog- with my wobbly shoes and my arm outstretched to get closer to snatching my brolly back up!
What was truly sad about this story was that it was one of the brollies used by myself and my bridesmaids on my wedding day, so I could say it was of sentimental value. The truth is, it is a little tricky to be too sentimental over an umbrella that (I will now admit) actually came from a pound shop (the ones you can buy from bridal stores etc. are sooooo expensive- and this one was a pound!! Whoop whoop!! I was never going to tell anybody that but I feel it benefits his story...so there!)
But I did take a picture of it, partly to mark it’s disappearance, and partly because at this point I was starting to see the funny side. Here it is, final fleeting moments:
Sentimentality aside, I tell you what did anger me. That lifeguard I mentioned earlier...yes, he was there to save lives and I appreciate the importance of that job ( I was a lifeguard for a summer in America in fact!) But there was no one else on the beach. Definitely no one in the sea. There was absolutely no one in dire emergency. And yet this lifeguard- who, I might add- had earlier been jogging up and down the beach presumably to keep fit and warm- just watched the whole scenario unfold!!
He could see my flailing efforts; he could see I couldn’t go too far because I had a baby on the beach; he could see my hard working efforts to RESCUE that umbrella. His job is to RESCUE. He did not even attempt to RESCUE my umbrella when he actually had (in my opinion!) nothing else to do! It was now raining quite obviously on a grey British beach: dare I ironically question who’d even bother with the beach, let alone swimming in the flipping sea!? I felt let down by the lifeguard: I clearly needed some sort of help!!
Unless he just thought I was hunting down some rare giant jellyfish because my brolly was see-though, or he thought I was playing Pokémon Go?
Anyway, the point really is that I looked like an idiot. It was now properly raining and we were without cover. We headed back to the car. And you know what? Once we were in the car baby looked uber happy- as if the car was the greatest place on the entire planet- and she started grinning and smiling almost to spite my efforts to get her out and about. Had I known sitting in the car was the most fun thing that day I could’ve saved myself a whole lot of bother. So next time it’s a rainy day and we need to get out of the house, we are going to sit out in the car on the driveway and embrace the joy of not being on a cold, wet beach!
That said... when we eventually got home I did have a stroke of genius and created my own shape drop box for baby. Considering it took a whole 2 minutes of strong artistic talent to create, she played with it for ages, so I'd highly recommend it as an activity if sitting in the car isn't an option...!
