on the beach

things were starting to look distinctly corny around here. you know, the flowers, the bees, the blue skies and the smiling children... i feel the need to push your noses into some of life's authentic details. we got to the beach around 4 o'clock, and some of us wanted to go back as soon as we had arrived (if not earlier). i was carrying toini's toilet (we can't leave the house without it, since he won't use any public facilities and he considers relieving himself in the wild to be nothing short of barbaric), his rather heavy tonka bulldozer (obviously!!), his wallet, his lollipop from last week (which madelin had friendlily retrieved from behind the coat-rack), approximately two kilos of stones and broken bits of ceramic (i.e. the treasures we had found on the way), not to mention the ubiquitous carrots-apples-bananas-water-bottles and my big bulky camera.

having arrived, we unpacked the kite, and then promptly lost it, meaning that toini let it go, and isabelle stumbled after it, in complete panic. it was very windy. i hadn't even noticed because i was trying to photograph my own reflection in the sunglasses of my mummyfied (because frozen) best friend without getting any sand onto the camera (the hardships of the artistic life). when i saw the kite, it was flying way off in the distance, with no child attached to its lower end, and isabelle was a tiny spot on the horizon. i packed up the camera (no sand, no sand, no sand) and ran, remembering to smile flirtatiously at one of the handsome kite-surfers on the way (because it is spring after all), and trying to run in appropriately attractive fashion (very hard when running in deep sand with a hood on and one of your boots half unzipped due to the bulkiness of the pyjama pants that are rather unsuccessfully tucked into it (i know, i know, one shouldn't wear one's pyjama's on the beach in springtime, but they are black, and you can't really tell they are pyjama's, in fact i am not at all sure that they are pyjama's, maybe they used to be regular pants that i forgot to take off one night (that happens) (a lot), and thus they became pyjama's, but anyway, what's in a name?)), finally reached a completely hysterical and collapsed isabelle, spent some time sitting and hugging and making things a little better, while trying to wink at the kite-surfer with the back of my head (hood), and at the same time making grateful polite conversation with the friendly swedish lady who brought back the tangled but complete kite.

finally trekked back to find entire family of frozen friends ready to pack up and go (except toini who, having completely forgotten about the kite, was just starting to get warmed up with the tonka bulldozer and would not budge until he was bribed with a couple of pistacho nuts). the entire visit lasted approximately 32 minutes. but it looks darn good on the photographs, don't you think?