The
warm weather has allowed the late painting of the beach hut. Usually
it gets done before autumn has set in but, luckily, the weather has
been kind to a lazy blog writer.
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| The beach |
The
huts are a feature of our beach dating back, at least, to the
Victorian era. Technically, they are called “bathing huts”and
may have been first built when sea bathing became fashionable in the 18th
century.
Our
wonderful sandy beach has a lesser, shingly companion hidden behind a
large knowe or hillock. In Edwardian times,this was known as “the
men's beach”. The enclosing rocks make the waves stronger and
the depth allows for diving. The young callants could pit themselves
against the sea and each other without upsetting the delicate
sensibilities of the matrons and maidens on the main beach who might otherwise catch a glimpse of an unclad male leg.
A
few of the huts are possibly a hundred years old, built with seasoned
timbers by local shipwrights to withstand all the North Sea and
Scottish climate could throw at them.
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| A safe distance for male bathing! |
Old
sepia photos exist of large-hatted, billowy -frocked matrons with
parasols supervising their offspring on the sands in years before WWI
.
.JPG)
Most of the huts are now later editions as is our own one, replacing the
original which finally succumbed to the elements many years ago.
The sea- and wind- facing frontage soaks up preservative like
blotting paper.
The
full moon has produced a spring tide – a spring tide in November -
nothing to do with the seasons, just a name for the big difference
between high and low tides. The sea was far
off as I painted the hut door, too far for the surfers who would come
back to enjoy the waves as the tide rushed back in.
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| Surfers |
The
moon is the Hunter's Moon. Each full moon has its own name. The next
will be the Moon before Yule and so the annual cycle continues as it
has done for millennia, from before the beach huts, before the people,
even before the beach itself existed. The tide surging in and
retreating out, obeying the commands of the Moon.
