The Ocean

My vision is folded – well demi-folded as only one contact lens has decided to jacknife in my eye – some distance away from a decent mirror and something with which to wash my fingers before poking them into my watering orbs.  I’m not overly concerned, sooner or later I will blink and the offending lens will catapult itself forth, never to be seen (or see) again.  My world will be hazy, but without a crease in it.  At least an artificial one…

The way I see things has always been a little eccentric.  My vision has always been a little bit like those mystery photographs of everyday objects you used to get in magazines (usually a corkscrew): I see the same as everybody else, but not necessarily in the same way. 

Do you ever look at the horizon and wonder why, wherever you are, it remains in the same place and why if it doesn’t move, you can never touch it?  Funny thing, the sea, don’t you think?  It is fed billions of gallons of fresh water from rivers every day, yet it remains determinedly salty.  Why?  It can’t all be due to toddler wee.  Conversely though, why are rivers not salty: they are made up from the same rain, they run over the same rocks (fundamentally) and the flow must make them every bit as astringent.  I know – I believe – that climate change is causing sea levels to rise, but I am struggling to understand some basic principles.  Thermodynamics are not my thing, but I’m pretty good at gin & tonic.  I realise that ice-caps are melting, but I’ve seen ice melting in a full glass and it doesn’t overflow.  I also know that the drink gets colder.  If this is up-scaled, the oceans will not get higher but they will get colder.  I might just have stumbled on the solution: the sea needs more gin.

The sea here is definitely warm, but I have no idea of whether it has always been that way.  At home I live just a few minutes drive away from the east coast and the sea there is not warm.  The sea is never warm.  The Skegness foreshore is cold enough to cool the whole planet.  People do swim there, but they are certifiably mad.  There is no sane reason for entering water that is only survivable if you are covered in goose fat.

It is part of the human condition that we seek to create boundaries where none exist naturally.  When I was at school there were five oceans (I think: my geographical knowledge has always been best described as ‘extremely dodgy’) Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic and Antarctic, but it’s all really just one body of water isn’t it?  So, who decided to split it up and where to do it?  Was it a few powerful nations saying ‘This is my fish.  Go to another ocean to catch yours’, or is there some more scientific rationale – which would explain why I don’t know it? 

In any case, it is hard to argue against the ocean itself being the mightiest of all powers.  It is vast and its strength can be devastating.  It will be the true ruler of the Earth until the Sun decides to throw in the towel and evaporates it all – and I won’t care by then as my view of the world will be exactly the same as everybody else’s…

But here comes the waves
down by the sea
Washing the eyes of the men
Who have died…  The Ocean – Lou Reed

I am writing this piece whilst overlooking a section of coast that was devastated by the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 which caused an estimated 165,000 deaths.  Whilst here we have spoken to people who experienced the destruction and we have seen photographs that will haunt me forever.  Today the sea is a vast aquamarine millpond and I hope for the sake of these beautiful people that it will long remain so.