A thin tideline snakes ahead of me kissed by the milky tide, glistening with a million bubbles. It is a white day of sweeping mists—surf washes up against the white sky and froth spills over pale sands. The light is diffuse and non-directional. The day has no hour. The beach has no angles. From a distance the tideline is continuous but becomes intermittent as I approach. It is made up of clumps of jewel-like seaweed—jade eel grass, shreds of ruby dulse and the brown jasper of bladderwrack—connected by outstretched strands of thongweed weaving between blue and orange threads of ghost net. I stop at each tangled mass, nudging it with my foot, looking for treasure. Each clump is different, glossy, wet still from the just receding water, hinting at submerged jungles swaying softly beneath that rolling, restless surface. I crouch to study a piece of bladderwrack caked in tiny white whorls; they are hard and unfamiliar under my fingers. Egg sacs? Worm casts? Footprints of an unknown (to me) micro-bivalve perhaps? I curl the piece of weed up in my hand and tuck it away in my pocket to look at later, entirely expecting to forget all about it.*  

The little bodies, having careened across the beach when we arrived, hollering and whooping over each cuttlefish shard, are now busy excavating a very large wooden pole which a high tide has deposited near the rocks. We are separated by the constant rush of air roaring with the sound of water. Glass-like droplets collect in our hair. I am impressed by their determination but will admit I am not wholly supportive of their endeavours— I do not relish the prospect of dragging what seems to be a telegraph pole back over the cliff path. I continue to follow the winding tidelines across the beach but now I am retracing my steps, back the way we came. We set off late today and, while it is hard to tell exactly where the sun is on a day so saturated in white, we can all feel the day seeping away.

The noise of the sea is colossal, the froth unending. Between the mist and the white crests of water J points to a gannet. There are several white bodies in white air, racing, almost horizontally, along the inner curl of the waves; dipping sideways to fish instead of harpooning downwards. They are difficult to make out in the white haze. We finally manage to convince small ones that flotsam must be abandoned and we move together through the softened, borderless landscape back to the cliff path.

As we pick our way along the crumbling edge, a small flock of lesser black-backed gulls in winter plumage slant across our path and curve up to the rocky outcrop above us. They know the day is waning, that it is time to bed down for the night. As we walk, stragglers continue to arrive, gliding in at sharp angles, perhaps blown off course by the same wind that now pushes sheets of mist towards us.

By the time we reach the dunes it is the luminous half hour that can only happen on days with no sun. Light seems to seep upwards from the ground illuminating, or emanating from, the understorey beneath the marram grass. Dandelion leaves shimmer, a small unidentified sedum glows blue and here and there tight clumps of lime green sphagnum moss shine like tiny neon beacons. I walk slowly, partly because the sand gives way sideways beneath my feet and partly because I can hear something battling with the roar of the sea. The weakening light is amplified at the sea’s edge but it does not reach far beyond the fringe of the dunes, and dusk breathes heavily on one side of us. But it is filled with birdsong. I can make out a blackbird’s simple but poignant voice. But there are others that I do not recognise. I pause to scour the darkness of the hill, the little bodies beside me seize this opportunity to disappear into the whispering grass, diving headfirst down the steep dune slopes. The unseen, unknown bird has a haunting call. It is a hooting, wavering cry. I think it might be a Curlew at first, but it isn’t quite right. I cannot hear it clearly enough beneath the endless rush of ocean-whipped sound. Perhaps it is a golden plover? I know they have been spotted here. I continue to listen, staring fruitlessly into the darkness. Soon even the sphagnum moss has lost its shine and the dusk sweeps over us to the lip of water, two tides meeting.

The lights of the town are warm in the haze of water and darkness. I turn to squint at the ground looking for abandoned wellington boots while little bodies dance bare foot across the twilight sand.

*The seaweed waited patiently in my pocket for two days discovered only when I went to grab my gloves… a pair of very sandy, slightly damp gloves.