between the rock and the cold, cold sea

When I unpacked my boots, the pair I brought to the States, I discovered something strange and terrible.

They were green.

In the week between bagging them and taking them out (the four days in New York, and the three asleep afterwards), a curious green and white fungus had covered them nearly to their laces.

Well, said I to myself, this can't be good.

Today, I had both time and opportunity, so I brought them to the beach. Salt water and sand will clean nearly anything off boots, as I had cause to discover some years ago - and when you scrub with sand, you at least don't have to disinfect and/or throw out your scrubbing brush.

Possibly I've introduced interesting new toxins to the poor little crabs in the rockpools - terribly bemused by my cursing and stomping, they scrambled to hide under seaweed and rock - but I've yet to hear of a fungus not bred to saltwater that actually thrives in it, so hopefully I've done nothing more irresponible than feed the sandfish.

Still, it's an interesting illustration of the perils of a closed suitcase.

Went swimming today. Once this morning, an icy splash at low tide, after which I hied me to college and did some stuff which will hopefully result in partial funding from college for my participation on the Crete dig.

Didn't go gymming, as it was too warm (25 Celsius and humid, I am not used to heat like this). So came home, and went swimming again.

( Cut for long story about Not Drowning )

It was a truly stupid thing to do, and I think I'm pretty lucky it didn't turn out worse. If the current had been stronger, the chop worse, or - godless heavens avert - there really had been a visible sizeable fish of any kind at all, I would've had to try to land myself on a rock and damn the embarrassment, or risk a less optimal outcome.

Another twenty metres might've broken me, too. Thirty or forty almost definitely would've.

I forgot the first thing every swimmer knows about the sea: The sea is not kind. The sea will drown you.

So you stay firmly within your competance, or you die.

I was, luckily, within my competance. But not nearly so firmly within it as I would consider safe.

I mean, I was okay. There were plenty of people there who would have been within their competance to rescue a (stupid) swimmer in distress. And certainly better I come up hard against the limits of my abilities in such a relatively safe dangerous way than some other time, somewhere else, possibly when I was on my own.

But. Still not smart.

I am so never doing that again. Next time I want to swim twenty metres plus? I will stay in my depth. Or arrange for a damn boat to be around, so I can escape imaginary man-eating fishes, if I feel the need.

So, that was my day. How was yours?

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*Yeah, I realise this is a kind of small distance. I did point out, not a great swimmer by any means?

**I should note that because of the chop, the water was quite clear? Clear enough to make out obstructions, or things three metres below, not quite clear enough to be immediately certain what they actually were.