Twilight Picnic

Ahoy there, m'hearties!

We're having a late blast of summer and I have come alive!

I can be found out in the garden doing a systematic and ruthless tidy up and cutting back of anything I found slightly unsightly.  Or I can be found on the beach, picnicking, swimming or just watching the world go by.

And as I have oft said, neither garden nor beach doth a good fashionista post make.

So, prepare yourselves,ladies.  Brace yourselves for this ...

... for this is about as scruffy as I will let you see me!

We decided to have a tea time picnic and swim.  I wore my beige shorts over my brown bathers (swimsuit) and threw over an old Next beaded brown chiffon beach kaftan.  If falls down to my knees, so I ruched it up into my shorts pocket for the trip to the beach.

When I look at these pics, I think that if I'd had the foresight to ruche up around waistband level, I could almost have got away with this as a post-able beach post.  But I didn't.   So it looks messy.  And as I said, I think this is as messy as I'll go for you!

Tell me. is this as scruffy as you can take of me? Do you think you could handle my Garden Scruff?  Believe me, that's a darn-sight scruffier!!!

What about you. ladies?  Do you dress smartly for your beach trips?  Or are you like me, slinging something on at the last minute because you know that all but your bathers are coming off as soon as you hit the beach?

The beach at late tea-time.

The picnic.

I keep my picnics real.  So you see here a pile of seafood and salad bits, some Mediterranean olive bread (yummy), served inelegantly on an Ikea picnic plate and a-top a checkered headscarf.  Real!

The tide was still quite low.

We had the beach almost to ourselves.

We islander's only go swim-crazy at high tide.  So most had gone home, tired of waiting for the tide.

So we waited.

And waited.

And when the tide was about 2 hours off high, the sun was going down and we could wait no longer, we had to take a swim with what we had to hand, being very shallow water and an awful long way out to swimming height.

Do you have big tidal variances where you are?  We have a tidal range of 10 metres (approx. 30 feet) so the difference between low and high tide on a flatish beach can be quite significant.

When we house-swapped with a Danish family a few years ago, that was one of the things they raved about !  It's just something we see as the norm and for us it means that we try to time our swims for high tide, as there is a bit more of a dip on the sandy beach end making it easier to wade out to swimmable height.  On this occasion, I had to wade, and wade, and wade.

As I said, my picnics are real, not blog-posed.  Here, strawberries in an old ice cream container, a glimpse of baby wipes packed to wipe off sandy hands, a can of unhealthy diet coke.  So real, so unstaged!  But the basket is cute, eh?  It was my mum's and it's the old Guernsey style, used to pick tomatoes back in the day.  BITD when we had a tomato exporting industry, which my reader Christy remembers.

So, now that you've survived the Scruffy Pout post, I hope you'll be back for more.  I've got to do a jumpsuit try on next.   My cruise is fast approaching and my cruise case approaching even faster!

Yikes!!! What to pack?!

 A la perchoine.