Rubber Duck Experimentation

It’s eight o’clock in the morning and the sun is barely up in the sky. We’ve made our way to the beach, which has been ploughed and tended and is ready for another busy day of sun cream and lying about.

But that won’t happen for a few hours yet, and we’ll be long gone by then. For this hour, the beach and the waterline belongs to the walkers and the joggers. Not to the swimmers, though. Not yet at least. There is no sign of the swimmers.

Which is a bit of a shame because we had our hearts set on a daily eight a.m. swim in the sea before breakfast on this long-anticipated week’s holiday of ours. Nothing is stopping us from doing that, of course, nothing at all. Except…

Well, it’s a silly thing, really. It’s just in all the mile or two stretch of pristine beach and calm grey water, there is no one in the sea. Not one single solitary soul. Quite a few people, like I said, walking and jogging, some walking backwards. But nobody is swimming.

There is a disturbing sense that the world knows something that we don’t. That our early morning swim would be a very, very, bad idea indeed. Who knows why? Your guess is as good as mine. Pre-breakfast sharks? Killer jelly fish? Aliens from the depths. Something must be amiss. Nobody is in the water.

An elderly lady in front of us is walking along in our direction. She is going pretty slowly but that is almost understandable as she is walking backwards. She’s got a big billowing caftan on, and she looks a bit like a sailboat, albeit a pretty slow one. We watch her go. We want to walk backwards too, just to see what it feels like, but it might seem rude or mocking in some way.

The end of the beach is nigh. A stone-built rampart marks the termination, and a modern 4-star hotel rises above it. The walking-backwards lady gets to the wall as we contemplate the empty sea, and she proceeds to so some wall-pressing and wall-face-planting exercises that are a little reminiscent of the final scene of the original Blair Witch Project movie.

Why is nobody in the sea. What do they know that we do not?

The Blair Witch Walking Backward Lady has now been joined by another lady of similar vintage. She leads the first lady in a series of gentle movements which seem neither Yoga-like nor all that coherent. Then the newest lady breaks away and comes over the beach to us. She is brandishing something and as she draws closer, we can see what it is. It’s a tiny yellow rubber duck with a complicated tubular scientific device secured to its underside.

“Good morning,” she says in a way that somehow tells us that she is German.

“Good morning,” we reply as we eye up the duck device warily. Will some form of insertion be required?

“I need to know the temperature of the sea,” the German lady continues, “for my friend. She won’t go in if she fears it will be cold.”

We are sympathetic if a little unsure about what is required of us. She presents the duck, ceremoniously. “Could you help?”

All is suddenly clear. The tubular undercarriage is now clearly a thermometer. To paraphrase Robert Shaw, “Duck goes in the water… thermometer in the water… farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies…”

We must have looked as if we were readying ourselves to go in the water, despite nobody else on God’s Earth being in there. We must have looked brave. I take the duck and smile.

“No problem,“ I say.

The water is lovely. Cold at first but then just grand. There are lots of little blue fishies who swim around in the sand that our feet kicks up. Patricia goes out and swims strongly parallel to the shoreline while the duck and I continue to dick around in the shallows.

The German lady returns to Our Lady of the Wall, having first ascertained Patricia’s first name. (“My daughter’s name is also Patricia,” she says, and is there a note of sadness in there, or is that just writerly license? 'Not sure). I bring her the duck and she inspects it, confirming to the lady that the water is indeed 23 degrees. The lady does not nod, perhaps out of fear of scratching her chin on the wall, perhaps not.

As we leave to walk back to our holiday place for our first breakfast, there are swimmers in the water. Did Patricia show them all that it is okay to do it, or did it just become okay right after the three of us (Me, Trish, and The Duck) ventured in? It’s hard to know.

All I know is that we’ll be back tomorrow, when the 7.45 alarm sounds. We’ll walk the beach and then we’ll have our dip regardless of whether anybody else is in there or not.

Sometimes it’s okay to be the first to do something. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing if nobody else is already doing it. In fact, sometimes it’s a very good thing that they're not.

I have this on good authority from one very small duck.

That, and the water temperature.