'The snot-green sea. The scrotum-tightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah Daedalus, the Greek. I must teach you. You should read them in the original. Thalatta! thalatta! She is our great, sweet mother. Come and look.'
So speaks Buck Mulligan at the beginning of Ulysses. I first read these words at the age of 14, in the Penguin edition. I knew what Joyce meant.
I don't know why, in a running blog, I record my sea-swims, unless that, just as every run is different, no matter how familiar the route, so, when immersed in saline, and with variations of tide, current and waves, is each swim.
This evening, for the second time recently, I came home early enough to go to the beach. After Sunday's winds, there was still some surf, and seagulls pecked at remnants of cuttlefish on the tide-line. There were no other swimmers; a few anglers had erected their rods along the beach. It was rough, but refreshing. Three hours before I had been in central London
When I was a child we always swam after school on a Thursday. My father, a GP, ran his practice single-handedly, but participated in a rota for weekend cover and Thursday afternoons. He had no surgery in the evening that day so, unless he was on call, after school we would be taken to the University bathing sheds or Sheep's Green on the Cam or Jesus Green, for summer swims, or the new indoor pool by Parker's Piece.
