CLYDE ROYAL |Western News| Contact
My favourite family outings are the ones that don’t result in me bringing a part of the environment home with me in my shorts.
I know the pushback I’m going to get is “just go to a pool then” and I get it, this is a valid way to look at the problem, but I like the ocean. It’s the granular shit fight I have to endure to get there.
To give my opinion a bit more context, I’m a father of two. Often I’m the pack horse, on the way from the car down onto the beach you fall into a false sense of security, everything is clean, the kids don’t yet have sunstroke and the missus isn’t entirely fed up with everyone. It’s the walk back to the car, piled with chairs, bags, towels and sometimes a child. All this is often punctuated by a couple of stray grains influencing a heavy chafe between my legs.
Now there’s the wind, when you’re trying to reapply sunscreen to your body and unbeknownst to you the wind has covered your arms and legs in individual scratchy boys. Personally, the beach isn’t where I want to be enduring a surprise wet sand exfoliation (I exfoliate at home in secret).
“He threw sand in my eyes”, “Stop kicking sand”, “my sandcastle got washed away” these are just a few examples of drama purely created by sand. Imagine if you could make it all the way into the water on grass. I’m getting emotional at the thought.
I know the headline suggested that I believed we needed less sand, but in writing this I’ve realised the only solution is no sand. And to be clear, I don’t mean we should have pebble beaches like in the UK, pebbles are just bigger bits of sand.
