A friend of mine is leaving Oxford this weekend. Okay, you might say, no big deal. They probably had somewhere to be- a meeting down in London, one of the many Oxonians to sneak off into high-powered advertising internships. Or maybe it’s an important family occasion, a birthday or wedding perhaps. Or maybe they’re even being hunted by a ruthless Columbian drug ring, and if they don’t move on swiftly they’ll be found hung up by their gaudy bow tie outside the RadCam (this last one is less likely). But no, it’s nothing like this. My friend is leaving purely to see the sea.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I like the sea in an objective, abstract way. It looks pretty when you’re on the cliffs, it’s good for fish and things, I’ve even heard it’s even used to hide things, such as the eight million tons of plastic we dump in the ocean every year. Out of sight, out of mind, obviously. And this is exactly my attitude to the coast itself- it’s like Oxford’s sewage system. I’m very much glad it’s there, I appreciate it, but I don’t want to go exploring in it. But this friend, who lives on the South Wales coastline, has been pining after the surf and salt sea spray for months- so much so they can’t wait the few remaining weeks until the Easter Vac. “I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and sky”… honestly, it’s like living with John Masefield.
We always seem to have been fascinated by borders and by edges: Douglas Adams, author of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and all-round hoopy frood, wrote that: “we all like to conjugate at boundary points. We like to stand on one side, and look at the other.” And maybe that sense of perspective is important: just as we need sadness to recognise what happiness is, perhaps we need a definite edge to our world. Just as in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld where the world is flat and the seas simply run off into nothingness (whilst held up on the backs of four elephants who stand on the shell of an enormous Star Turtle Great A’Tuin who swims through the depths of space, obviously), the coast can seem to us like the border of some great unknown- if we could just see over the horizon. Of course, this is the basis of most human exploration and much of its fantasy, and not something I sympathise with, as I sit here tucked snugly away in my landlocked little Oxford room. But it’s nice to think about now and then.
And then- in between the boundary of the sea and the land, there’s the shingle. Some sort of no-man’s land, a passing place. No one expresses this better than the poet Blake Morrison in his epic poem ‘Shingle Street’, centred around a beach of the same name. Full of the wash and swash of the sea’s rhythm, rhymes and punchy lines tumbling over each others like breakers on the beach, it transports you directly to the short strip of shingle on which he’s standing, looking out to sea. It has to be read aloud: it has to be experienced. Go on: if the room’s empty, stand on a chair and proclaim it. And if there’s somebody there, sod them and do it anyway. No, I don’t want to go with my friend to the sea- though I can perhaps understand what draws them to the edge.
Shingle Street by Blake Morrison
On Shingle Street
The summer’s sweet,
The stones are flat
The pebbles neat
And there’s les rip
When tides are neap.
It’s fine to swim, or fine to try
But when the sea funs fast and high
The skies turn black and cormorants weep
Best watch your step on Shingle Street.
