Icecream Sunday

A day off today. I'm not used to days off. I mean, obviously, I've just come off a few weeks holiday, but that's different. It's been a reasonable whack of time since I last had a regular, weekly day off. The two weekend acting classes that I run were combined into one easily manageable Saturday session, freeing up my Sundays. It means I'll take quite a hit on my monthly pay, so I'm going to have to spend less on things like, I don't know, fresh fruit and vegetables, but on balance, it's probably a bearable sacrifice to make for my mental health. And it's not as if I eat a great many fresh fruit and vegetables anyway.

So far, despite my all new work ethic, I haven't done a great deal with my day off, but I'm going to call that a good thing, since it's my, you know, day off. I've had to prepare for tonight's PPM (Pre-Production Meeting) for Three Kinds Of Me, and sort out what I'm doing in tomorrow night's Acting Class, but that's been fairly low impact, all things considered. Actually, all things considered, I probably wouldn't have found them to be such a low impact duo of tasks if today hadn't been a day off. That's the thing with wall to wall, relentless seven day week work .. Your mind (and emotions) aren't given enough breathing space to do anything,

I even found myself on the beach this afternoon. Only the second or third time this year, which is criminal, considering how close I live. I've been physically down there quite often, but normally only as a passage to get from the flat to town, very rarely as a destination. I think my boredom threshold is very low. It always seems like a grand idea, like the sort of thing I should be doing: sitting on the beach, reading a paperback, but quite often I'm getting twitchy after only ten minutes. I did ok today then; I was down there for about two hours. It helped that I went for a bit of a swim in the sea.

Now, I haven't swum in the sea for a couple of years. Again, criminal because the beach is only blah blah blah, but time and circumstance always seems to drive it away from me. Nevertheless, I'd decided quite early this week that I was going to commit to swimming in the sea on my new found day off. Once I'd checked the weather forecast, I knew there was no escape. It would be stupid not to. Once I'd done enough avoidance tactics of reading stuff on my kindle (it's true, you know, it really is easy to read in direct sunlight), I finally managed to get myself into the sea. Now, bear in mind this is the first time in about two years that I've been in the water, so I spent about two minutes doing a sort of paddle thing as I contemplated just how cold the water might be. As I did this, I was aware that was surrounded by loads of kids who clearly had no problem whatsoever with how could it was. So I (literally) took the plunge. And that's another truth often told: it's ok once you get your hair wet.

And it was actually quite lovely. I swam out further than I expected, not quite far enough to experience an Open Water moment, but far enough to almost lose the sounds of the crowd on the beach. The sound of the brass band on the bandstand did manage to float over. Another solitary swimmer splashed by. And suddenly, without warning and unbidden, an idea for a sequence for the novel that I hope to hack out during NaNoWriMo came to mind. Turns out I was working after all.