Secret Royalty On Tour

It’s complicated.

Not that we’ve broken up six times, then got married, then broke up again, then hooked up again or anything like that. But I’m never sure where I stand with sand.

I mean I love it, don’t get me wrong. Standing on sand means you’re not needed anywhere else in the main. You’re definitely not at work and you’re probably not in a hurry to do much but lie down.  It is most often attached to sea as well.  Most would call that a bonus.

We’ve just had three days at Bentota Beach on the South Coast of Sri Lanka, and twice a day I have skittered across the sand to get into the Indian Ocean where, surprisingly, I swam.  And swam.  It was warm you see.

I have spent years watching all the boys in my life throw themselves into the sea and onto the adjacent sand with abandon. I watch with envy and will myself to transform into Action Woman and join them. And I run in, I do, til the sea flirts with my butt, then I stand for a bit and say my goodbyes.  That’s what I do. I have done this perhaps five hundred times; each time I think it will be different than the last. It isn’t.

After my retreat, I begin the strange dance where I arrange the towel and try to mount it without sand accompanying me. I fail. Once I’ve failed, which I do every time of course, I sacrifice myself to the sand gods and just lie the fuck down.

At Bentota, my interaction with the sand was running across it to get to the warm sea.Like a chunky little gazelle I was, twice a day.

But now I’m back at Colombo, and it’s 1130pm I am sitting in front of Casa Colombo in a garden bar with a sand floor. Now this sand, this sand I am at one with. Hello my friend. Maybe I am destined to remain  a fascinating stranger to the beach, an action woman only in the city.

I am learning to make peace with it all.

Vodka and Soda,thanks, that would be great.