I am on holiday, standing on a coastal headland under a bright blue dome of sky, the wind light and warm, looking at the weather app on my phone. The forecast and the scene are in agreement: it’s a nice day.
I scroll through all the locations where I’ve previously felt the need to check the weather – Exeter, Marseille, York – until I get to London, where, it turns out, it’s also pretty nice.
Normally when I’m on holiday I only check the weather in London in order to gloat. To justify the trouble and expense of travel, you really want it to be 17C and raining at home. But we’ve pushed back an urgent meeting with a roofer in order to go ahead with our holiday plans, so my mood is doubly weather dependent. I would rather it rained on this headland than over the hole in my roof.
“Try to look as though you’re having a good time,” my wife says, catching me up on the path down to the beach.
“I am,” I say.
“You’ve got this terrible pained expression on your face,” she says.
“The pained expression,” I say, “is me trying.”
The dog is capering up and down the narrow, winding path, occasionally disappearing over seemingly sheer drops. I don’t suffer from a fear of heights, but I am susceptible to a form of acrophobia-by-proxy: I feel it on behalf of other people, even strangers, who don’t appear to possess my judicious good sense with respect to precipices. Whatever’s wrong with me, the dog is setting it off.
“I’m just going to wait here,” I say, my heart rate beginning to climb. Our friends, and their dog, are ahead of us.
“Relax,” my wife says. “The dog isn’t going to just jump off a cliff.”
“I’m not sure what you’re basing that belief on,” I say. “But I will relax, as soon as you’re all out of sight.”
I sit on a rock and wait, staring out at the sea and resisting the urge to consult my phone again. After five minutes, when I feel sufficiently alone, I clamber down the rest of the way comfortably, even a little recklessly. Maybe this is the solution, I think: going on holiday by myself.
The tide is out; the flat expanse of sand between our blanket and the water’s edge is immense. The sky, even over the sea, remains cloudless. On Wednesday, I discover, there’s a 35% chance of rain in London.
“What a spot!” says our friend, whom I’ll call Paul, because his name is Piers. “It’s so remote!”
“But with a surprisingly good signal,” I say, waving my phone.
“I’m going swimming,” my wife says. “Will you come?”
“I’ll wait and go in after,” I say.
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“You really don’t have to worry about the dog,” she says.
“I don’t even know what you mean by that,” I say.
The dog follows my wife down to the sea and waits at the edge of the surf. As soon as my wife wades out and dives in, the dog starts barking and leaping into the waves, then panicking and bounding back out. It’s very hard for me to watch. The dog can swim – I’ve seen it swim – but I’m also pretty certain it lacks my judicious good sense. I’m worried that if the dog gets into difficulty I will be obliged to swim out and drown while attempting to rescue it. That’s just how these things work.
I resist the urge to stomp down to the shore, clip the lead to the dog’s collar and stand there waiting, because I’ve been doing that all week, and my wife has made it clear I’m killing the vibe.
Instead I compose a text suggesting a Wednesday meeting with the roofer, even though that would mean coming back a day early, and I would have to wait to consult my wife about that. She probably won’t want to, but looking at my phone slows my anxious heart, so I write the text and then don’t send it.
An extra large wave thunders in. The dog turns and runs up the beach in my direction, spraying sand in its wake. Sitting down next to me, the dog scans the sea in a posture of unrelieved vigilance. Every time my wife’s head disappears behind a giant wave, the dog stands, whimpers, waits, eyes fixed on the spot. When my wife bobs up again, the dog sits.
“Do you do this when I’m in the sea?” I ask it. “Just out of interest.”
The dog shudders along the length of its flank, letting out a high-pitched keening sound.
“I find it helps to look away,” I say. “Slow breath, look away.”