the beach

A week ago we took a break at 'the beach'. This spot, Riversdale beach, is on the coast of the Wairarapa. My grandparents bought the section 29 years ago (so I've been going there all my life). For 20 years it was just a couple of caravans. In the 2000s they started building a little village comprising of a bigger sleep-out and a wendy house and a couple of sheds and what not.
Goodbye long-drop (yes!) and hello mod-cons. But not too modern - my family are habitual collectors of old things and cannot, no cannot, throw anything away. So it goes to the beach.
Occasionally someone will splurge and buy something new for 'the beach', and that's nice, but actually I relish in the hodge podge of stuff still to be found there, from 1970s swimwear and shoes and sunhats, to vintage tennis rackets and badminton shuttle cocks, to a 1990s kitchen of hideous colours, and an old formica table and chairs and a pull-out couch with musty old mattress and squeaky springs and beds pushed together that don't match up - that sort of thing. It feels like me, it feels like a permanent memory. Quite simply, it is my favourite place in the world. (Not that I've travelled!)

This holiday we found the kids were a perfect age together. Our little Laidey slept or lay on the beds, the other two explored safely within the watch of two relaxing parents. Sometimes we played on the beach.
Sometimes we searched the property and found things like bird nests and pine cones. These we took home for the fireplace. They make excellent kindling!

We have a large patch of tussock grass on the way to the beach. This proved to be the best fun of all, Hugo and Georgia falling down into it for fun. I used to despise the grasses for prickling my feet and legs and harbouring katipo spiders (which I now know don't live this far down the North Island.

The kids topped and tailed in a bed. So much better without a cot!

These wild lupins were Chris' nemesis. As he hacked them down I rescued a bunch of flowers and took them home for Oma. 

Then he cut me a bunch of these geraniums, which also grow as weeds there.

We treasured each moment and felt so grateful to have this place to escape to.
It's lovely to think of Georgia gaining her first memories of the beach. I remember being her age and being afraid of sharks in the sea but going in all the same and getting dunked by the waves and walking the endless 1km to the shop for an ice-cream. Bliss.