Seaside

We're in Rockport. We've come down to the coast because the boy is back at school on Monday, and we're aware that he can't have had the greatest summer what with all of the coronavirus restrictions, so it's like a last fling before school starts up again. To be fair, school actually isn't starting up again, but as of Monday he'll be plugged into his laptop while a tutor in another part of the city attempts to teach him how to do sums over an internet connection. Anyway, the point is that he's obsessed with marine biology so we've had a day out at the aquarium in Corpus Christi. Most of it has been him bombarding us with facts and statistics about what we're looking at, which is actually a little overbearing and presupposes that neither my wife nor myself went to school; but he tends to lecture when he gets antsy, and we can't really fault his enthusiasm.

Now we're at Rockport which is about five miles further along the coast. The aquarium wasn't too full as we feared, with everyone masked and keeping their distance, so we're hoping the beach might be the same, which happily it is. We've brought swimming trunks and towels. The plan was to get the boy moving around a bit in the sea, his exercise regime having reduced to three or four daily journeys from his bedroom to the fridge in the kitchen punctuated by long periods of physical inertia with his face glued to something electronic which makes intermittent beeping noises. That was the plan but he can't be persuaded for some reason, so he hangs about on the quay looking for hermit crabs in the rock pools.

The beach isn't too crowded, thankfully, so I'm going in regardless. Last time we came to Rockport, I watched from the quay as the boy is doing now, wishing I'd brought trunks and was in the water; and on the way from Corpus Christi, it occurred to me that although I've been in the sea, mostly on either the Welsh or Cornish coast, I've never actually swum in the sea - which strikes me as odd given that I'm now in my fifties.

I've changed into trunks in the nearby public bogs, and now I'm padding down the beach with slip-ons on my feet. We've had the conversation about whether anything in the local waters is likely to bite or poison me, through which I realise I haven't even stood in the sea on this side of the Atlantic, never mind swimming. This is a first on several counts, and happily it turns out that there isn't much living along this stretch of coastline which could really do me any harm, but I wear the shoes nevertheless because I don't want to risk stepping on a sharp stone or whatever.

Now I realise that this really is my first time in these waters, because I'm up to my shins and it's actually warm. Without even meaning to, I'd braced myself for that initial shock of cold water, which of course never came. It's not even not actually cold warm. It's jacuzzi warm because of course we're not that far from the Caribbean. It's mostly sand underfoot, small stones being so few in number as to be an irrelevance, so I wade further out towards a horizon beyond which I assume must be the Yucatan and the eastern extent of Mexico. The waters are gentle, and come up to just below my shoulders after a few more minutes, requiring that I bob up and down each time a fresh wave rolls in. A grey pelican dives into the water at about a hundred yards distance from where I'm almost floating, which is dramatic and spectacular. They are enormous birds with a vaguely prehistoric look about them.

I kick my feet up from the sand and start swimming. I've only ever been able to do the breast stroke, and I'm quite frankly crap at it, but there it is. I'll never win a competition, but at least I stand a chance of not drowning. I swim back towards the beach until my flailing legs connect once again with the sand.

The boy is on the quay, pointing at things seen in rock pools.

'There's nothing stopping you coming in too,' I say, but he carries on, so we dutifully investigate his discoveries. My wife isn't swimming but is stood in the water. The boy is directing us to look at this or that, having subconsciously elected himself the tzar of the coastline. 'Did you know,' he asks in prefix to describing some aspect of marine biology, as though this is his world and we're here because he's invited us. Most of the time we do know, but as I say today he's compensating for some minor anxiety or other so he gets a pass. To be fair, I don't actually recall ever having seen a hermit crab back in England, where this beach is pretty much nothing but hermit crabs. Any shell you pick up and turn over will reveal segmented legs beating a swift retreat into the interior, so I don't actually have to feign my astonishment when the boy points them out.

I wade back out and then swim back in again a few more times. We use up about an hour.

Once we're ready to leave, I return to the land. We pass others who've come to enjoy the beach, albeit at a distance. Deck chairs and canopies are set out up along the sand dunes at the back of the road, and one family have decorated their chosen territory with flags - big life-size versions of the kind you would wave around having recaptured a hillock from the enemy, the kind which can be seen from a long way away. We have the stars and stripes, which is probably a little odd in the context but probably harmless; then we have the version featuring a single blue stripe across a black and white version of the same flag; and then we have Trump 2020 - Keep America Great. The black, white and blue version is used to show that one backs the blue, that one supports law enforcement. By strange coincidence it's quite popular with people whose love of law enforcement extends to giving cops the benefit of the doubt when they shoot unarmed black men, sometimes suggesting that those cops  are under a lot of pressure and had no way of knowing that the black man in question was unarmed - despite it quite specifically being their job to be able to make such judgments accurately so as to avoid murdering people who haven't done anything wrong.

In combination, the three flags planted here on the beach send a very clear and deliberate message, and one which, I might argue, isn't actually necessary in a free country. The guy who planted the flags isn't afraid to speak his mind, and no liberal is going to silence him, and he's proud of being able to state this. His statement is equivalent to turning up at the beach with a megaphone screaming enquiries as to whether anyone wants a fight? He's clearly a massive fucking twat, and a scared massive fucking twat.

I stare at the flags.

A fat man in a beach chair stares back at me.

I stare back at him, understanding that he's the guy, specifically he's the guy who has to make the beach, a geographical feature of the coast, all about him, and about what he believes, and what he's proud of. I keep staring and I stare hard with a big smile on my face, knowing that I make him uncomfortable, introducing a little more uncertainty into his life.

I dry out and we head into Rockport, then eventually home to San Antonio. We pass more Trump campaign material on the way back, even a Confederate flag, and a version of the Texas state flag embellished with the silhouette of an assault rifle - which is repulsive but constitutionally legal thanks to legislation passed by Democrat Senator Hugh Parmer in 2015, the irony of which will almost certainly be lost on those flying said variation of the flag.

Yet today I swam in a warm sea and it has been a good day, regardless of the shitheads.