When I was a small child I witnessed a sight that even I, young as I was, realised was a tad eccentric.

We were on the beach in North Norfolk, where we used to holiday… and indeed still did, right up until last summer… if only, last summer, to say goodbye to the house we’d holidayed in since long before I was born and which we took my father to every August for the last decade of his century, after my mother was no longer available to go with him.

He tried on his own, the spring after she died. Our son Alexander said, Grandfather, if you wait a few days I can take half a week off work and go with you. One of the most endearing and rather more infuriating traits about my father was his impatience.

(My brother once said, impatient people get things done. My father did.)

So off he went on his own, muttering about nobody being available to go with him… and came back after twenty-four hours, white as the proverbial g and admitting he would never do that again.

Which meant we had ten glorious Augusts by the coast, looking after him there. And until he was nearly a hundred (and had a pacemaker which would have taken fright at the cold long before he did) he went in the sea at least once a day.

Anyway, this memory I’m telling you about was long before that.

We stood on the beach. (As in a dream, I can’t remember who “we” was. Except that I was one of the we. And very little.)

It was snowing.

And my father went in the sea.

Frankly I thought he was as raving bonkers as he was almost stark.

Young as I was.

There was even a kind of sneaking sense of silence afterwards that perhaps he thought so too. He never did it again.

There has been much talk in the media… well, I say that. A few mentions in recent months. About the advantages of cold swimming.

I’ve referred to it myself. There came a point in November when I said to our eldest, this stress I’m experiencing is so unbearable, I want to drink half a bottle of whisky or something. But even I had a vague idea that half a bottle of said stuff wouldn’t necessarily improve the situation permanently.

In the long run.

So she told me to go in the sea.

The remarkable thing was that it genuinely helped.

(Yes, I know we’ve been through all this. It’s what they call a recap, for those who missed that episode. Just be patient, will you, for those who are new to this blog.)

(This is the pool I shouldn’t have shut this winter. If I’d known in October what I know now.)

After that, believe it or not, I went in pretty well every day before breakfast. If only for a few seconds.

Which, to be fair, was all my father did, that time when I witnessed him going in when it was snowing.

Now, there came a morning, as they say in the old færy tales and Bible stories, when I went in as usual – I have an idea Serena might have been with us by then; and joined me in the cold water herself; though not, by chance, on that particular morning – and I ran back to the house as usual. And put the kettle on as usual. And got dressed as usual. And went out to hang up my swimming togs… &c and so on.

And what do you know?

Well naturally you don’t. Because I haven’t told you. But it’s reasonable to assume you might have guessed.

It was snowing.

Just after I come out of the water.

So there we are.

It’s official.

I’m as nuts as my father.

(And let’s hope, one day, tough. And determined. And in love with a bracing cold splash about.)

And he lived to a hundred and two. And a half. Don’t forget the half.

Though sadly, decided to leave us just before lockdown.

Which was quite sensible really.

In his last years, he didn’t appreciate the cold.

Not if he wasn’t swimming in it.