This person lives near me (though I don't know him personally) and I liked the idea of the title of the blog...well rather than liked as such I suppose it resonated with me and of course I found the content interesting and arresting at times. I chose the title of my own blog ...Breathing Underwater (if you remember that far back) with a similar kind of intent to the aforementioned albeit for different reasons at the time. The point of course bring that you can't do it...well not unaided. I could have called it "drowning but staying alive" but that would have been a tad cumbersome. Having said that it would have avoided confusion in the search engines between my little blog and purveyors of diving equipment but that's by the way. No harm done..as yet. I don't give out advice on hazardous oceanic activities and they (I assume) don't write strange blogs about nothing in particular. I liked the idea of writing stuff down to help me process it ...and of sharing this odd (and by definition impossible) journey with anyone on the Internet who was vaguely interested (or who had mistakenly logged in expecting a tutorial on scuba equipment). Several years on I'm not really certain of the efficacy of such an endeavour...or if it really helps to turn your feelings into words. Of course the general principle is sound enough...but I'm not sure about the practice in my case. But I will persist regardless, if for no other reason than it fills up time. As I write this it is a sunny day up here on the County Down coast and Newcastle is buzzing with people....not really how I like it but I can't have everything my own way. I used to come up here two maybe three times a week after the "big upheaval" of a few years back and walk the stretch of beach from the Sleive Donard hotel to where the large warning signs for Ballykinler rifle range adorn the sand...I would stop at various points along the way and gaze out at the sea from the waters edge. I would go there in all weathers...even the depths of winter...to the point where I should have been able to identified every grain of sand on that beach. Well I exaggerate...every other grain perhaps. But you get the point. Sometimes I'd have music from the iPhone blasting in my ears...sometimes just the wind and movement of the waves. Other times I just walked, locked into a state of "not thinking" at least as far as certain things were concerned...allowing the embrace of the sea air and the never really changing spectacle around to overwhelm the "spin cycle" of anxiety and anger and whatever else that was my constant mental narrative at the time. Sometimes it actually did....at least intermittently. I remember particular snippets..one especially sunny day when the gleaming water actually gave me a flash of that sense of wellbeing that was completely alien to me at the time (if I ever had it)...so much so that I recall staying there a very long time and if not quite basking in it allowing it some ingress. Another day the wind was so strong it was blowing a sandstorm and I had to walk backwards into it eventually taking shelter at the rocks till it passed...the ghostly movement of sand is still etched on my mind. And then there was the day in winter (December I think) when it was bone numbingly cold...the exhilarating sort of cold that penetrates the very marrow and blocks out everything but it's own razor sharp chill. There were many other days (and evenings) of course but those ones for some reason stand out. On particularly grim days the thought of that beach and being on it later that evening or the following weekend ...or just the view of it to be honest in my minds eye...kept me going. The thought of not getting up to Murlough for an extended period...I am talking a week or so...would fill me with what I can only describe as slow release panic. In those early days I was still a believer...so prayer ...both silent and verbalised...was part of the equation. As the further parts of the beach were almost deserted I would head to particular spots (and usually to the waters edge...or if the tide was out to the furthest point where I could firmly stand) and I would talk to the God who I believed was still in control of the chaotic events of my life. Usually I would mumble to myself but occasionally I would become more vocal...I do not recall crying to the heavens as such but I certainly cried on occasions and I'm certain as the intensity of feeling increased so did the level of my voice. Mostly though it was drowned out by the wind or the sea noise though I do recall thinking that if the occasional passerby saw me standing with my lips moving they would have thought me mad...not that I was that concerned. I can't now remember the specifics of what I prayed..though I do know there were specifics...I was a bit of a talker when communing with the deity. Looking back now and thinking about it the intensity of those encounters shocks me a little...it seems not only from a different lifetime but that it was a different person standing there. Much has changed in my head since then and yet much remains the same. Not least my complete about face on the God front ...but that's another story.
And so to today and Murlough. It's been a couple of years at least since I did the beach walk outlined above...despite being up in Newcastle most weeks I've confined myself to the town and the coffee shop, viewing Murlough from a distance. Over a year ago when the winter storms caused severe damage along the coast I had heard that part of the beach had been swept away and had meant to check that out for myself but I never got round to it...seems it was an exaggeration. I walked incessantly after leaving the house (I no longer regard it as home...I will always have a problem with that word) but not so much this last eighteen months or so...I have a problem with my hip (which walking exacerbates) but that is perhaps too handy an excuse. Last evening a friend of mine asked me if I had what she described as "a thinking spot", somewhere specific I would go to clear my head and weigh up decisions etc...the question carried a lot of resonance and I immediately thought of Murlough...and that particular spot on the beach almost midway across where I did a lot of thinking and praying. She suggested I should go back there again and I said that if I was up there today I would...and that is exactly what I did. It took that little push and I am grateful for it. It is always much easier not to do things than to do them...I am an expert in the former. It was sunny & breezy this afternoon and by the time I made my way round to the beach the tide was well out, which I always prefer at Murlough...you get these islands of smooth sand on the far side of the stones, the latter well pooled with water and requiring a bit of dexterity to negotiate. I headed to the first expanse of sand I came across and stood facing out to sea...there was no one about despite the lovely day it was and the sea was restfully foaming in that way that it does with just enough breeze coming off it to lightly chill through my cotton tee shirt...but not enough to make you shiver. I recalled the last time I was there...or thereabouts...I still believed in God and would have felt it perfectly natural to talk to him out loud. I felt no such inclination today but it did feel slightly odd just standing there...old habits die hard perhaps. I didn't do much thinking...it was good just to be there again in that familiar place that had been such a constant backdrop to my life for so long ...and despite the changed dynamic to my thinking it felt like I'd never been away. I resolved to get back into a routine of coming here again...albeit in a new dispensation so to speak. I thought about my friend and wondered if she had gone to her own "thinking spot" as she had said she would. I stood for a few more minutes looking out at the horizon then turned and began the walk back to the car park steps.
It felt like I'd accomplished something, even though I knew I hadn't.
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