March 2021 - Skimming stones

There was a time when I would go down to our caravan in Lancing at the end of February to open it up after the winter – always an exciting thing to do. This year – no chance. I hope that I can revisit it sometime in April, but I’m not holding my breath for that. There’s so much to see and to do – even in the immediate area of our caravan: the beach is always a place to see things happening.

And last year, as we were beginning to grow our awareness of COVID, I went down there to get the place all sorted out. At the beginning of winter, I put all the linen and clothes and suchlike into plastic bags with the air sucked out, so that they won’t get any mould on them, make sure that the dehumidifiers have a fresh tablet in, so my job is to get everything out and back into use, making the beds and seeing if we need any more SNOOPS (Stuff Never Out Of Permanent Stock!) in the larder. And maybe watching a Six Nations match. Not this year very sadly.

I took this photo on the beach at that point last year. I love seeing families playing on the beach – a shingle beach, so there isn’t much opportunity to build sandcastles – but there is lots of tie to skim stones over the sea. The sea is usually a bit choppy – so I don’t imagine that stones can have that many bounces off the surface – but that doesn’t stop the fun. In this picture, Dad is throwing the stone: if you look carefully you may be able to see it just above and straight ahead of him. Mum watches the child, the child is watching Dad. I have converted it to black and white and I think that the starkness suits the image well. 

There’s nothing unusual about seeing people doing this; but it is always nice to have a record of a family’s happy times.