High Tide 03:20 (2.30m)
Low Tide 09:12 (0.80m)
High Tide 15:34 (2.30m)
Low Tide 21:49 (0.70m)
Sea temperature: 9.9
Sea conditions: calm but low
Weather: fine, a crisp breeze but sunny and whisky clouds blowing away
Joined by: The Usual Suspects and The artist, Sara and Mertz as bystanders

Ulysses and the Sirens - Herbert James Draper

Would we swim in the trough or not? As the bystanders watched it must have looked strange as we all filed into the narrow strip and swam in a straight line along the deepest bit. The girls all got slightly ahead of The Pirate and as we did so I remembered that I'd been woken by the sound of emergency sirens at 5am, they had continued on and off for the next hour so I asked if anyone had heard them or where the sirens came from. The Pirate, catching the end of the question replied "Sirens...? I'm swimming with them." Depending upon which story of the Sirens you a re more familiar with this could have been a wonderful compliment or a rather barbed insult, I'm not sure which was his intention. 

“Next, where the Sirens dwell, you plough the seas;
their song is death, and makes destruction please
(in verdant meads they sport) and wide around
lie human bones that whiten all the ground.
The ground polluted floats with human gore
and human carnage taints the dreadful shore.
Fly swift the dangerous coast: let every ear
be stopp’d against the song! ’tis death to hear!”

Alexander Pope, 1725
Turning the tables I'll simply point out that Herbert James Draper seems to have The Pirate's likeness rather finely captured in this depiction. 
There were a couple of melodramas this morning; firstly Mertz had come to say good morning and intended to walk the dogs across the marsh whilst I swam. He set off as we went into the water but as I came out Luna was running back down the beach on her own. Minor panic. Had Mertz and Willow fallen in a ditch and sent her back Lassie style "Go Lassie... fetch help... Tell them we've fallen in a ditch"? Had Luna decided to stay with me and the other 2 hadn't realised and would not do so till miles from anywhere, then panic too? Fortunately Sara was able to see Mertz as she had her glasses, he was heading away from us purposefully, so I rang him, texted him, shouted in vain, so had to assume that he knew where she was and still had Willow. Sara reassured me and said she was sure he was aware, but I told her about the night before when I nearly had to sleep in the beach hut. I'd been out to see a friend's Americana/skiffle band and Neil Brand play a live score to a 1927 silent Russian movie about a jail break in Argentina (it worked) and had come home to find myself locked out of the house. It seemed he'd gone to bed and temporarily forgotten I lived there, so it's was quite possible he hadn't noticed that one dog was missing. 
Meanwhile TBC had lost her car keys. We all searched her changing spot but there was no sign. She went back to the car to check they weren't there, we marked the spot she'd occupied with a heart stone and carried on searching till she returned. 

They weren't in the car so she returned saying the only other place to look was inside the poo bag... the full poo bag. We thought it through quickly before she had a chance to undo the bag and suggested she may have put the keys down in her rush to poo pick on the beach. Sara had remembered where the fouling happened and found them straight away - phew. 
DK, The LE and I discussed our day ahead, he's busy with his theatre work and is finding it rather stressful. He'd been bothered all day by the screaming hoards in the playground-sized garden next door and had finally had enough by the early evening so called the family's housekeeper/PA to ask if she could put a stop to it. Within seconds the neighbourhood fell silent so he texted to ask her how she'd managed it, "they are playing silent tag!" came the reply. Hopefully they will be playing silent tag, silent football, silent basketball and even silent trampolining today. The LE was off to collect her new bike today, and was very excited, I've just had a text from her to say it's home and being tested as I type. I've got one of those days that comes along once in a blue moon and that I get more excited about than is probably healthy, I'd forgotten it was a Bank holiday: