Autumn Tonic Water

After Keep Fit the weather was so warm and sunny (for October) that I just had to go and jump in a lake, Crummock being the nearest.

No one was parked up in the pull-in so I thought I would take the opportunity to skinny dip. A good spot is by the holly tree as it gives a bit of privacy – although not from sunbathing cattle. However, I thought they might deter any passers-by from lingering. And indeed they did. Just as I was about to launch in an elderly man with a dog hove into view. However, whether it was the sight of me grabbing at the towel or whether it was the cattle he turned smartly on his heel and disappeared over the rise again.

I relaunched in a flurry of goosebumps and splash, crocodile swimming out from the shore as I’d forgotten my sand-shoes. It wasn’t as cold as I had thought it would be with the extra rain we had had, but the texture of the water itself was a surprise. The little waves were full to bursting with bubbles. It seemed as if there were more free oxygen and hydrogen molecules than they could hold. Every time my hands reached forward it felt as if my arms were being plunged into Indian tonic and from the surface tiny drops of bubbly water under propulsion were bursting out, plinking and fizzing into my face, adhering to the length of my body. The whole lake, and me with it, sizzled with energy, effervescing into the sunlit breeze.  I wanted to stay there forever, impervious to the cold; a rather wrinkly naiad in a lake full of magic.

However, as always the human metabolism starts to whine when exposed to extremes for too long and it’s good to pay heed to that when you’re in the water alone, lest the lure of the kelpies pulls you down. So, I emerged under the incurious eyes of the brown steer to rub some feeling back into numb skin and then ran back up the slope to nibble biscuits inside the greenhouse hot car.