On the beach

At ten to five the sun rose. Me and the boy were seated in our directors’ chairs on the beach, mourning the embers of our dying fire. We were about midway along a five-mile curve of shingle, about 30 yards from the sea.

The sun came up, as I told my boy it would, in the east. First a rim, then this big boiling orange orb appeared behind a hill and climbed remarkably quickly into the air. A small hapless cloud that happened to be in the area was burned off. The moon, low and translucent in the west, slunk quickly away. After that the sun had the sky to itself.

There wasn’t a puff of wind; the cigarette’s-worth of smoke from our fire went more or less straight up. The waves collapsing on the shore were piddly. In spite of their lack of vigour, however, every other one washed up hundreds of tiny silver fishes that died in shining rows on the wet shingle.