Blue Dress Hot Mess

02/07/25: The First Evening

There is salt on the air — from the fish and chips, not the sea. There are naked children and whirlwinds of sand. There is white wine in the picnic chair holders making pools of yellow light shudder as the shadows form. There are freckles (on my nose) and pigeons (in the sky) and onions (in the house) and I am grateful to be here in the summer and in the sun, in England, in Suffolk, in Shrimp.

The clouds are moving fast and a rat fat as a balloon picks his way carefully over the pebbledash. I roll up my trousers and stick out my pale legs towards the sun; my deck shoes are worn, old. I kick them off. Wiggle toes. Stretch.

03/07/25: The First Day

I knelt in the bath waving a hand-held shower over my head, so that my hair dripped long and ginger down my pale back and my ankles buckled. The sun streamed warmly through the window, thin streaks escaping its flood into the walled garden below in order to flow through the slats of the open white shutters of the bathroom. The window is open; through the rain of the shower nozzle, I can hear the birds.

It is 4:35pm.

I have been pooed on by a seagull — twice. It is for that reason that I am washing my hair. I run my splayed fingers through it with a webb of gelled conditioner. I marvel at its length. My hair hasn’t been so long in a long time. I like it, and see a mental image of my Summer Self with pretend beach waves and turquoise jewellery. I watch the sand tumble down the plug-hole – listen to the birds whirling outside the window – and smile. 

The white-washed house glows pink-orange in the sunset. If it were make-up it would be called Apricot Blush (it would be sold as a Summer Shimmer, and it would dance on people’s skin regardless of their age or sex or fears or hopes like little girls in ballet tutus on Midsummer’s Eve). I walk towards the cannons on the green hill, looking out to sea and pulling my friend’s mum’s hooded jumper closer around my neck. (There are 6 cannons; my friend and her little brother and me used to slip silently – or so we thought – out of the house in the early morning and run to Gun Hill, where we’d climb on the cannons and do the Macarena as the sun came up over the North Sea. We felt young and burdened by our futures, but oblivious of its weight on our backs. One Macarena, two Macarena, three Macarena, four. That same little brother now sits with me at breakfast, and says in a deep voice “Rat” through a mouthful of Nutella toast). My phone flips to nine o’clock as I write on my note app, descending to the promenade along the beach. No church bells chime. It is silent – save the waves, save the gulls, save me. I have to pause, to write. Every colour is amber and every cloud is candy floss. The wind whips through my circus-tent striped trousers in firm ignorance of their think linen layer. My legs prickle in response, goosey and cold. I feel contented and light headed and full bodied. My body and brain feel as one. I am full of a single glass of red wine and bolognese fusilli. I taste cold lemon water on the air, see a man pour away his pint, and decide it is time for bed. 

I like men with earrings. I like the breathless cold of the sea. Heyyy, Macarena. It is fun to be me in the summer. (Jump).