Off the ledge and onto the beach

I felt cheated as I stood on the beach.

It was a strange experience being there, so very different from a British beach. In my native country the sands would be covered by large numbers of parents lounging around, basking in the sunlight and watching their children tear around the beach, paddling in the water, or building sandcastles (I confess my memories here may be tinted by my own childhood). Here the beach was filled with entirely with movement. Couples wandered along the shoreline arm in arm, and children playing football or cricket seemed the most prevalent types, but sunbathers were entirely absent (how shocked my Mum would be) and virtually no-one stood still.

Save for myself perhaps.

I'd wandered a little way down the shore, placing some distance between myself and the crowds. Not that I minded them, just that I'm generally more comfortable out of a crowd than within. I stood there, with the teaming mass of people behind me, watching the sun continuing it's decline, waiting for the ocean to swallow it whole. The moment never arrived. Instead the sun vanished into a bank of smog a few degrees above the horizon.

I'd noted the smog earlier in the day. Any building more than a mile away was transformed into a hazy grey shadow in the distance, but the effect on the sun was considerably more dramatic... and far removed from the spectacular sunset for which I'd been hoping.

Disappointed, I turned my back on the missing sun and vanished into the madness of the crowds.