Life’s a beach


After happily sleeping for twelve hours on Friday night, it was almost inevitable that we’d get no sleep on Saturday night, and so I felt like death today. I took a nap and woke unable to tell if I was tired or just paralysed, and then we went to the beach at Sentosa to see a friend.

I hate beaches. I cannot stand them. It may be the lack of air conditioning, or the water full of jellyfish and diesel, or just the horrible sand that gets in everything, or because of various traumatic experiences with wasps during my childhood, but there you have it; I don’t find any joy at the seaside.

Plus, I was exhausted, and we were in the middle of a series of huge rainstorms, which didn’t seem like the right time to go to the beach, but we’d told the children we would, so off we went.

Like any good Englishman, I brought an umbrella and skulked under it as long as I could, until I had to take La Serpiente down to the sea, where she decided it was too scary and ran back, and then I had to take Destroyer to the sea, where she wanted to wade in, but I didn’t want her to because she had a deep cut on her knee from falling over this morning … and I was wearing trainers and an ankle brace because, well, I hate sand and didn’t want to go in the water.

It rained. It was still sunny, but with the rain drizzling down, like God thought I might be homesick. Why not supply me with a holy Thermos of lukewarm tea and some ham sandwiches then?

There were no rainbows. Story of my life.

About 6:30, we left the beach and walked back to the station to get the monorail, found the queue was miles long, went to get a bus, missed the bus by a matter of seconds, waited a quarter of an hour, got the bus to two stops from home on the MRT, by which point the kids were just completely demented with lack of sleep, got on the MRT, got off the MRT, walked home, fed the kids, put them to bed, and wondered what I am doing with my life.

And I’ve lost my hat, and my new book on healthy snacks, which we had just yesterday. What is going on?


2 responses to “Life’s a beach”

  1. One of the most uninviting beaches I’ve seen … there’s as many CCTV cameras on the beach as sunbathers. Still, if anyone drowns at least it might make it to liveleak.com.

    • You don’t like the oil tankers, visible in the misty yonder?

      There were two other hardy souls sunbathing (just out of shot) and some drunk people cavorting in a bus shelter. So I suppose slightly more fun than advertised.

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