First swim of the year

When I was a child, my grandmother had a small house just across from the beach in West Sussex. From April until December, my mother, my brother, the dog and all the paraphernalia necessary to take a family away for two nights were crammed into my grandmother?s car and we would set off. The car smelt of petrol and stale Chanel 5; to this day the smell of Chanel 5, stale or otherwise, is inclined to bring on long forgotten feelings of nausea. My father, wise man, would follow later in the evening by train. My grandmother, loved my father, quite liked the dog, disliked her grandchildren, and positively hated my mother, so the rules were quite strict. We had to be out of the house by around 10, and preferably not seen or heard until around 4pm. If it was really raining hard, then an exception would be made, as long as my brother and I made no noise. So, come rain or shine and usually in a gale, our time was spent on the beach. We hobbled on the shingle, waded through jungles of seaweed and globs of tar, and plunged into icy water and we loved it. We sheltered behind breakwaters, eating sandy picnics; we fished from the pier in howling gales. So, the fact that my Florida grandbaby, (and most of family) doesn?t go in the water until both the air temperature and the pool are in the 80s inclines me to think she might be a mite wimpy, and veering a little more to the American than British. But then, whereas I had goose bumps she has a golden tan, not something we knew about until my mother finally cracked and decided 'the Continent' was a better option.