Beach huts are not traditionally linked with Christmas or New Year customs, or Pagan beliefs or Classical Mythology. But I am about to do just that.
Some determined souls make a pilgrimage to their huts to see in the New Year, but not many. Some manage a bracing post-prandial walk in what is become, by comparison with the summer, now a Winter Wilderness.
The “lazy summer days” of which the Corrs sing in “We are So Young Now” are in the past. (At least I think that is the lyric, have you noticed as you see too many winters the sound gets a bit mumbled).
Beach huts all too often are cold and damp and not fit to be pressed into Xmas service. The huts, largely shut down for the winter are remote now from the frolics of the solstices of summer’s past. They are dumb, ignorant of the riches of summer.
And any troubles and worries the past year has thrown at us are unlikely to be linked to any beach hut– as huts are exempt from our concerns at this time of year. The good that they do has been done. They are behind us as we look at the horizon of the New Year.
That is unless you suffer a winter break-in. There was one last night at my beach hut, my very own “Heart’s Desire”, my jewel on the South Coast, Did they get in? This is the evidence of the once substantial steel lock that was forced in my case. 15 beach huts were entered or made insecure. I suffered a minor loss to those responsible. My hermit-shell’s privacy, such as it is, was violated. My threshold was crossed with unseasonal intent.
Most annoying was the destructive force that must have been used to render wood from steel, and bend a door frame out of true. And of the wood, to shatter it to bits. I like gentle, and guarding the good, not damaging something designed for better.
The lock above was originally used to secure a jeweler’s shutter to its frame, and, because of it’s design, it made the surrounding wood the fabric that yielded.
If ever you are in Canterbury may I recommend S H Cutting, the family jeweler. Not because they gave me the steel lock mechanism, but because they bought a massive and expensive half-column advertisement from me when I was selling Yellow Pages advertising... a first for that classification.
The proprietor was in hospital , and his son, responsible for the advertising– and I – were both under eighteen and somewhat foolish by the standards at the time, although today everyone is doing it. I remember we had to wait until his eighteenth birthday before he was allowed to sign the order, such was the integrity of my employment. I intend to use that story to claim a discount, one day. I still have a copy of the order in the attic.
Security is something we all deserve. In this website and its parent website www.msbnews.co.uk you will find some practical advice for securing beach huts from the forces of chaos and darkness we would seek to dispel.
see: http://www.msbnews.co.uk/msn/news.html
and:
http://web.mac.com/beachhutman/Site/Blog/Entries/2007/3/11_BEACH_HUT_SECURITY.html
and:
http://web.mac.com/beachhutman/Site/Blog/Entries/2007/7/7_BEACH_HUT_SECURITY.html
Apart from that Xmas surprise, life has been good thanks to having had a hut this year. Which is my point, kind of. At this time of year we are reaping what we have sown from the refuge offered by the hut over the previous year Beach huts are a refuge in every sense. They are a refuge from pressures of work, a refuge from sun, wind or rain and a refuge from any pressing domestic concerns. A beach hut can also be a pleasure-dome but that is usually associated with summer weather, not the privations of winter.
Currently I am finding sitting in my home is preferable to opening up the hut. It is cold outside. And my little portable gas heater has been stolen. You are likely to have everything you need at home closer to hand, you are likely to be, or shortly be, with friends or family. A beach hut is superfluous at this time of year, but you do not have to visit it now to feel its benefit in how relaxed you have become because of your use of it earlier in the year. Especially at Mudeford Sandbank.
There is something about...Mudeford. Rich people have told me that a week-end at Mudeford Sandbank is worth a week at any other resort they know of. Something little known to those in the travel and tourism business, so far. They are far sighted, I, short.
At a time of celebration with, (or perhaps separation from), friends or family, the quiet solitude of a beach hut can have prepared us for the reflection we can undergo at this time of year. We can be inspired there, or find solace there. And yet more.
A small, meditative space can prepare us for the onslaught of the party season, so we appear wise amongst the froth and bubble as corks pop. It helps if you are not drinking and arrive deliberately late. Or, ignoring the party scene–from choice or from isolation from loved ones–the training of a beach hut can provide for standing up strong alone if neighbours or friends are over the horizon at this time of year.
You can withstand a cold blast more easily if surrounded by others, of course, but a beach hut offers shelter even when alone. Like any other comforter, be it a child’s teddy bear, a teenager’s iPod collection or a senior citizen’s mug of hot chocolate. The persistence of a hut’s benefit is that it is not just good for us when we are there, but because we have been there.
And not to forget that for some their beach hut in the summer is an extension of the party season whenever they are there. Some huts, (especially at Mudeford Sandbank), lend themselves to a party atmosphere whenever their owners and friends congregate.
But all is not perfect in this world, otherwise we would be in paradise, and it might be boring if the edge was taken away from life. The point about moments of joy is that they are achieved, earned, sometimes, in the face of a perennial struggle to find order, maybe peace, out of chaos.
But all is not perfect in the world. Wine and worse sometimes follows, rather than wine and verse, but in the last 100 years there has only been one drink-related arrest for bad behaviour.
There is something about Mudeford Sandbank that sets it apart from the common man Mudeford Sandbank is close to paradise. Beaches and beach huts are a tantalus. Beaches and beach huts promise so much, They give a taste of paradise, they are Arcadian. They are innocent, they are untroubled by the real world. Or are they?
To read this item with the pictures see:
http://web.mac.com/beachhutman/Site/Blog/Entries/2007/12/30_A_SCARY_STORY_-_THE_PRE-AMBLE.html