Friday, August 16, 2013

Old friends, new friends, and saying goodbyes

A week at the beach is, in fact, nearer five full days, perhaps five and a half.  We arrived on Saturday evening, and have to be out of the house by 10am.  Take away Saturday night for getting settled in, and Friday night for packing, cleaning, tidying up, and it's really only five and a half days.  Perhaps one year we'll manage to do two contiguous weeks: every year we think about it at the end of the vacation, and never really remember it the next year.

Boo and Skibo made new friends this year, staying round the corner from us: two boys, aged 8 and 6, who loved riding the waves as much as Boo and Skibo.  There was much laughter, squealing, and assigning of new nicknames: to Skibo's chagrin, he was given "Shrimp-puff": after much complaining, Boo finally stopped insisting that the other three of them had voted on it and that that was going to be his nickname.

We reconnected with two old friends this week, though it could easily have been five if a couple of other serendipities had come through.  Hopefully, in each of those three cases, we'll manage it in the near future.

And so we pack, run the washing machine over and over, finish up food from the fridge, and say our goodbyes.  Yet again, it's a house we could conceive staying at another time.  Perhaps next year.

Yours, saying "goodbye, old beach, old friend",
N.

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