High Tide	02:42 (2.50m)
Low Tide	08:58 (0.70m)
High Tide	15:20 (2.20m)
Low Tide	21:05 (0.90m)

Sea temperature: 4
Sea conditions: calm but with 100 yards of shallow, making it hard to actually swim
Weather: hard frost, freezing point and a cold wind from the south
Joined by: The Poet
Topics of conversation: 
The shape of the beach - it's changed dramatically over the last few days with the high tides banking up the shingle and exposing a smooth, wide expanse of sand which continues at a level for a long way before there's even a hint of a trough. This has also cleaned the beach and it's really at it's best right now, but this doesn't make for goos swimming as it's just too cold to wade all the way out to the deep water. We gamely splashed about in the shallows and I did a bit of running in the thigh high waves. In fact I've just remembered that as we were going down to the water The Pirate suddenly broke into a canter, pulling me along like a gambolling foal, I was so surprised that I went along with it till he said "let's run till we fall over!" which he's doing rather a lot lately as he said yesterday that he has the wrong feet on.
Tonsillitis - a friend was supposed to be staying with me this weekend but on her way here yesterday morning she'd had to turn round and go home as she's a single mum and he's got tonsillitis for the 4th time. He's also had glandular fever and the two seem to be connected. None of us could work out why they don't take them out for certain and there was speculation. I remember as a late teenager, when I used to suffer with it, someone said they don't remove them so that the infection doesn't spread elsewhere. When I looked it up on the NHS site it seems to suggest that only children get it, which is news to me  and they simply say: Surgery for tonsillitis is now usually only recommended if:

• your child has five or more episodes of sore throat due to tonsillitis in one year
• the episodes of tonsillitis are disabling and are disrupting normal activities, such as school work

We all dressed very quickly and for the first time in ages my feet really suffered and I had to stamp about to get the blood going again. There was to be no hanging around and so The Poet took the quick option and grabbed Alf, The Pirate's blind, cantankerous and smelly black terrier (who I have a serious soft spot for). He managed to make Alf look like a ventriloquist's dummy, which kept us all amused right back to the car park.

Cars not having spare tyres any more. The Pirate has a flat and so the RAC have to come and tow him to Quick Fit, I just don't get why they have stopped using those little skinny spare ones, they don't take up much space and mean you are not stranded. I put 'run flat' ones on my Mother's car as I didn't want her to be stranded anywhere and there's no way she could change a tyre these days due to her arthritis - they were ridiculously expensive but it had to be done. It was at this point that The Pirate admitted that he wasn't sure if he had a spare or not... He's always saying I'm a 'real man' and I was temped to say he's 'such a girl' till he called to DK and said "she's being mean..!" I rest my case.
In Bruges - we dumped into my Film Club friend on the way home and she had recommended that I watch this, so I had to thank her. I'd always avoided it in the past as I have issues with Colin Farrell, but as I had an unexpected evening in due to our change in plans, (as well as enough food to feed the 5,000) I'd watched it and I'd loved it. The tagline of the film is "Shoot first. Sightsee later." and it has a scene that had me laughing so hard I stopped breathing, it's on You Tube, but not suitable here.