At Last!! The Beach!!

As you can see from the pic taken yesterday, I got to walk on the sand at the beach, at last.
It was one of those beautiful days, just perfect. The warm temperature, the lack of humidity, & a gentle breeze, almost no clouds. I can believe in magic on such a day. There were plenty of swimmers, and the Life Guards were out, on patrol. I walked down the beach alone. GOM preferring to sit on the sand & watch the passing parade.
I breathed the wonderful salty air, & was just in heaven.

I had suggested we go to a Market which is always open at the weekends at one of the beaches. It was a long time since we had visited the market, & it had changed a little since our last visit. A few new traders, some secondhand & "interesting Olde" shops. Nothing really appealing to us, but we wandered about enjoying the sights. We were a bit disappointed at the lack of handcrafted items. There seemed to only be the LOLs crocheting & knitting baby clothes.
Since I am now a LOL & can do that myself, there was nothing I felt compelled to buy.

I did buy some homemade fudge though, for GOM & I to savour. Delicious, & very fattening I would imagine. Still, the portions were not large.
The stall holder had samples of her fudge flavours on display for sampling. One young lad obviously regarded it as his personal smorgasbord, & proceeded to eat his way from one end to the other. As he was about to finish the stall holder snapped at him, & finally his parents chipped him for being greedy.
It was all I could do, not to clip his ear!


Here are some of the cast-offs from the ocean, along the walk on the sand. The sand looks more golden in real life, I dont know why it looks so grey in my pics.
There are no exotic shells to be found on these beaches, but small children -& me- find them fascinating. I think of the creatures who once inhabited them, & wonder what became of them, to have left their homes abandoned.
I paddled my feet in the lovely warm seawater, & dug my toes into the sand. It was a free treat for me. I love to see seaweed, & fancy a necklace for a mermaid made out of the 'beads' of this seaweed.

When we were children, we used to spend a lot of weekends at a beach we called the Mount. It's full name is Mt Maunganui, & Ali Honey has posted of it before, & so have I.

It really was a wonderful beach for children & adults of all ages. There is an Ocean side & a Harbour side, so it is wonderful for surfing or just paddling.

We often used to visit an old Great Aunt & Uncle, who lived close to the ocean. The old man used to go fishing in the wild ocean, standing on the shore, & he would take us with him, over the sand dunes to the ocean side where he fished with a contraption he called a Kon Tiki. He made them himself, & they were a tin box like structure, which the waves would carry out to sea, on his long line, & the fish would get trapped in the box assembly, which would be baited, & when he hauled them into the shore, we would see the fish inside. They were very successful devices for catching fish, & there was always fish on the menu at their place. He would gut & clean the fish on the beach, & the screaming gulls would be in heaven. Sometimes he would take them home to clean, & he used the guts for fertilising the garden.

I can remember going with him on kelp gathering forays, after there had been bad weather. The beach would be covered with huge mounds of kelp, ripped from the ocean floor, & cast up on the sands of the high tide line. He would cart it home, in a homemade cart, & would use it for fertilising the gardens. He grew vegetables & some flowers, & considering the land they lived on was just sandhills, he did have quite a wonderful garden.

Our old Great Aunt suffered from rheumatoid Arthritis, & she was 'chair-ridden' poor old soul, so she couldnt go down to the beach, & spent her life in the chair in the corner of her lounge. She could still knit, & I remember her poor hands with the fingers bent double into the palms, & I dont know how she still managed to knit.

She was my Grandmother's youngest sister, & she had snapping brown eyes. Some of our cousins were scared of her, but really she was a lovely old lady, with a great sense of humour. After her husband died she had to be put in a home, & spent the remainder of her days trapped in a bed, surrounded by old women with dementia, & so she had no one to talk to.

Perhaps the saddest thing about her condition was, it had not affected her mind, & she spent lonely bored days lying in her bed. My mother used to visit her regularly, & would always try to take her some of her favourite food. She could be very acid, & quite savage at times, but now, I wonder she was nice at all, as the pain of her arthritis must have been dreadful. At least I have modern drugs for my pain.

I must go down to the sea again....(one of my mother's favourite poems)