I love beaches in winter. No people. No sunburn. No steeling myself to get submerged (as a would-be boyfriend once wrote of my aquatic phobia … “For a Pisces who doesn’t like water, some flowers to put in it”). I’ve become particularly addicted to a certain beach in Newcastle, which has a gorgeous little corner filled with rockpools and strewn with shells. Forget meditation, my favourite form of relaxation is poddling around rockpools searching for the perfect shell. My holy grail of shells would be the cowrie, but you hardly see them these days. I think it’s brilliant that Sprog 2’s favourites have nothing to do with “perfection”. She’s just as obsessed with little fragments of coral as the big, showy shells. She’s standing beside me while I type, showing me her “absolute favourites” and thanking me for having sourced a little chunk of sea urchin shell, because she’d “really been wanting some of that”. Since we arrived home, she’s been sequestered in the bathroom, meticulously washing all her beach booty. While it was lovely to get a bit of peace and quiet, I suspect it has come at the cost of a sand-drift on the bathroom floor. My other favourite winter beach treat is Malabar. I haven’t been in a while, so forgive me if the tide has turned … but for some bizarre reason it’s a magnet for sea glass. I dragged a family of perturbed Maroubra friends there one day on a sea-glass-collecting expedition and turned the bucket load we scored into a bathroom shelf display. I’m studiously ignoring the fact that their probable origin is smashed beer bottles … not very romantic. Neither is the wailing of two hungry Sprogs, fighting over the kaleidescope Sprog 1 has just made in the craft room … must feed the beasts …
TONIGHT’S MENU: Lamb & rosemary sausages & mash
housegoeshome 
Malabar’s lovely. I grew up there (you might recall). Every evening in summer, us kids would spend several hours playing on the rocks leading south to LIttle Bay and I still know every nook and cranny. Sadly, it wasn’t until I moved out of home and a deep-ocean outfall was built that that the beach was reopened to the public. As a result, for many years it was, perhaps still is, one of the eastern suburbs’ best-kept secrets.
I do recall … I think of you every time I’m there, wondering which house was yours.
what was your response to the corny line??? i personally, would need a bucket!! lol
Suffice to say, the relationship didn’t last! Although my aversion to water did.