{"id":1410,"date":"2011-12-23T09:08:37","date_gmt":"2011-12-23T14:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=1410"},"modified":"2011-12-11T09:47:03","modified_gmt":"2011-12-11T14:47:03","slug":"another-beach-regular","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=1410","title":{"rendered":"Another Beach Regular"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This woman is often on the beach early in the morning, generally very early, because I have come to recognise her fresh barefoot\u00a0print walking ahead of me on the wet sand.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes she\u00a0puts the end of the stick down\u00a0near her left foot, but I couldn’t find a photo of that print, and the dayI took the above photo she was just carrying it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The footprints she leaves are very distinctive – she might have hammer toes – and she always walks on firm damp sand.\u00a0 One winter morning she was walking in thick socks … not sure of that rationale.\u00a0\u00a0 After finding her fresh tracks just as I start walking, I will\u00a0 generally\u00a0pass her coming westwards towards me on her return leg.\u00a0\u00a0 Some summer mornings she must be there very early indeed, as on the other day when I took a few photos of her without her realising, it was only\u00a0 just past 7am. and she was on her return, nearly to the point where she enters and leaves the beach.<\/p>\n

Apart from the distinctive tracks we all leave we also move and behave distinctively so that there are quite a few regulars I recognise from a distance – they walk or run in a certain way, have particular dogs, some wave, smile, nod,\u00a0 some stare straight ahead clearly in a zone.\u00a0\u00a0 A couple of ladies talk loud and long as they briskly walk together, I hear them as the come up behind and pass me;\u00a0 there are three guys with very hairy legs and trim firm buttocks often jogging together (must take a pic for you some time..), and if I’m running later than usual I stand a chance of meeting a neighbour with a little black poodle called ‘Brian’.\u00a0 Interestingly dogs are different on the beach, the wide open space means there is room for all, and\u00a0but even dogs who might snarl\u00a0or fight\u00a0elsewhere will meet, exchange some recognition the way dogs do, and either move on or play together a bit before moving on.<\/p>\n

I also need to start thinking of her as the barefoot lady rather than the bag lady.\u00a0\u00a0Glancing at her from a disance, at first\u00a0I used to think she picked up beach offerings things – candles, beads and so on, perhaps a good piece of fruit or veg, \u00a0and carry them along in her bag.\u00a0 Now I know that is not so, and that her bag prolly just holds her shoes and that she prefers to be barefoot on the firm sand.\u00a0 In the past couple of years\u00a0I have watched her as closely as you can get without appearing to be stickybeaking – she doesn’t disturb any of those things – she does use her stick to poke about a bit in the heaps of\u00a0seaweed and other material on the beach, though.\u00a0\u00a0 She seemed absent for a few months and is now walking unevenly -hip? I wonder.\u00a0 A couple of years ago, one day I made a motion to speak to her but she held up her hand as if to stay ‘stop’ and continued on her way – I have never approached her again –\u00a0for whatever reason she prefers to be\u00a0solitary at least on the beach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This woman is often on the beach early in the morning, generally very early, because I have come to recognise her fresh barefoot\u00a0print walking ahead of me on the wet sand.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes she\u00a0puts the end of the stick down\u00a0near her left foot, but I couldn’t find a photo of that print, and the dayI took […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6uxpF-mK","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1410"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1414,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410\/revisions\/1414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}