The Wave Breaks
Created | Updated Oct 15, 2017
The Wave Breaks
The wave broke over my head. I was immersed in a saltsea swirl.
My brain exploded into visions.
Several recipes for blackberry and apple crumble, each with a secret ingredient, appeared behind my eyes.
I encountered an absurd lime green fish which spoke only in incomprehensible bubbly whispers.
If this was my farewell, I was unimpressed.
I expected at least one angel. Or even a cosmic realisation.
What use was blackberry and apple crumble to me now?
Eventually I surfaced.
The naked sun worshippers on the beach hadn't even looked up.
They'd surely have rescued me if I was drowning.
It turned out I was underwater for less than twenty seconds.
The wave was in fact tiny. To a surfer it would have looked like a ripple.
It appeared without warning from out of an otherwise calm sea.
Later, I imagined the write up in the paper.
'Middle aged English lady rescued from a freak wave on a Tenerife nudist beach.'
Hopefully they would have spared the photographs.
I have tried to make sense of the incident over the last few years.
I have spoken sternly to my higher self, requesting significant insights should my life flash before me again.
However, just the other day I was swimming in the sea and I remembered the lime green fish.
It made me laugh so much I almost went under another wave.
The laughter was a tonic. At last I understood! Why the weighty search for meaning?
('Quite so!' agreed the fish in an almost incomprehensible bubbly whisper.)
