A wonderful day. Later I realise just how wonderful. It was a day at the seaside, but such a day. It’s easy to write ‘a day at the seaside’ and ‘a wonderful day’ but much harder to actually remember – to actually put it back together so it exists elsewhere.

Days have parts. Here are some of them.

We ignored the car park full sign. Rupert had told us it was nearly full, so we drove on in. Louise has a good effect on car park men, especially here where they were young, probably surfers. They wanted to help and pointed us to a space. The space was too small, but another opened up nearby, and we were in. We filled a bag and I found the machine to pay £3 for three hours, as advised. The machine gave us a day’s parking by accident, which was perfect as it turned out, because we stayed all day.

There was a sandy duney path, a path through the sand dunes and we walked along past a sign that did not say no dogs, but rather ‘be a good dog owner and pick up pook’s poo. We walked on. On a grassy knoll I spotted Rupert’s hat sitting on his head, and Joey eating his lunch, all sitting on Rupert’s yellow coat. We met, well met, and he collected his things and we walked on over rocks towards the sand and the sea.

Have I mentioned the sea? I don’t remember seeing it at that moment. It was later that I saw it. It was there: Five miles of beach with sand and sea and spray and waves and surfers. We walked on easily over rocks and away to the right and found our spot under the cliffs, cliffs which were of domestic scale, gentle. Arriving.

I think I stripped down to my trunks straight away, wanting to get into the icy water as soon as possible, to feel the chill of the waves, to swim. Louise and Judy and William put on wetsuits. This took some time. I put on a T-shirt, then took it off, somehow at first thinking that it would have some wet-suit qualities, then deciding it wouldn’t.

Judy had her wet suit on first and we went across the sand to the sea and paddled. I didn’t want to swim yet because I knew I would not be able to stay in very long. We went back to the others. Louise was shoehorning Will into his wet suit. He was a little too big, but they got there. Oh, somewhere I zipped Louise into hers. She does have a fine body.

I should mention the weather. We set out from the cottage at twelve and it was raining and the thermometer in the car said nine degrees. Now it was about one o’clock and sunny and perfect and much more than nine degrees.

We swam. Later the children returned to the car to get the body boards. They had initially planned to leave wet suits and everything at home, not believing this day was a day at the seaside sort of day. Louise put it all in the car anyway.

I build a rock castle which became a nest of dragon’s eggs. There is a picture. I lay in the sun. I swam again with Rupert. Anna arrived. Joey played naked in the sand and in pools of water, made little sand castles. Somewhere in the afternoon Louise bought sausage rolls and water. We walked among rocks and black seaweed arm in arm. We kissed.

On the way home we found fish and chips in St Agnes and sat above the beach and watched the surfers while we ate.

A perfect day.