New Coastie – Suckers for the sea

Why does everybody want to go to the beach? It is all about the beach. When I was planning on moving to the Hibiscus Coast all property advertisements were about beautiful sea views and how close the beach was from the house. 

Lockdown levels go down and everybody rushes to the beach. When the news media talks about rule breaches, they always use a camera angle that makes us look like a herd of lemmings about to jump into the sea. We dream about travelling after lockdown, and where are we planning to go? Yes – Rarotonga because it has the best beaches. Today my neighbour came outside the house and asked if I was willing to contribute money to the neighbourhood collection for cutting down a couple of trees which were blocking the view of, you guessed it, the beach.

What is so good about the beach? Our evolutionary ancestors left salt water to come to land because they had enough of swimming around aimlessly in the salt water. That first fish, let’s call him Dave, wanted to get away from the water so badly that he changed species to become an amphibian – Kevin. Still too wet, Kevin’s hatred of the wet environment turned him into a reptile, Philip. It was dry enough for Philip, but he did not want to take a chance, so he worked his butt off to produce his first mammal offspring, Bob. 

Bob is a bit laid back. It has been millions of years since the emergence of Dave, and he has forgotten his ancestor’s disdain for water. Bob’s descendants go crazy. Some like land, some are indifferent and some love water. 

Behold Chad, the first human. Chad is insane. He loves water so much that he is destroying it in the process. He eats all that is in the sea and puts all his refuse in it – the first home of his ancestor, Dave.

So here we are now. We, the descendants of Chad, have a complicated relationship with the sea. We love it but we are hell bent on destroying it. It is like an abusive relationship. We are so in love with the sea that we cannot live without it. However, every chance we get, we beat the living breath out of it. It is astounding how we reconcile our deep affection for the sea with the fact that our poo goes into it. 

We are always ready to take a dip in the sea, but we gag in disgust while retrieving our phone that fell into the toilet because we were engrossed in formulating a perfect, virtuous tweet about all the rubbish in the sea.

That was a bit of a rant, wasn’t it? We are all feeling a bit “ranty” these past few weeks. It is good to have a rant sometimes. The Coast is my home and I worry about my home. Maybe, I just need to take a walk on the beach to calm down.