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.