Holiday ugh

Day 2 of the school summer break.

Already I've stopped speaking to my son.

Yesterday, it was blisteringly hot so we went to the beach. I have invested in a sensibly-priced, 10- quid pop-up beach tent. But it needs weighing down with pebbles to stop it disappearing to Mars in the slightest breeze.

It was windy yesterday.

As we padded across the interminable acres of sand that make up Westward Ho! when the tide is at its lowest, he remarked pointedly and in advance, that he would not be collecting the necessary pebbles.

We chose an unimaginative spot and I put all the bags down. Hunter had been carrying his usual self-assured smile and little else. He wandered off towards the ocean leaving me sitting half in, half out of the tent.

I ate an egg mayonnaise sandwich.

I made an executive decision: placing most of the heavy stuff towards the back of the flimsy, fly-away tent I sprinted to the lip-line of the pebble ridge and picked up two rocks the size of a Leeds university student's doner kebab. I puffed back and slung them in the tent with a curled lip like I'd arrested the Kray twins and banged them up.

Job done.

I polished off the second egg sarnie than wondered if Hunter was ok in the sea. I threw caution to the wind: I took my time.

I googled Jean Shrimpton and Universal Credit.

I then blew up a Turbo Ring in triple time which gave me the dizzies. Frightened by now, I thundered down the rippling sands to find him.

It was like that scene from Jaws. The lady in the floppy hat calling for her son.

I couldn't see Hunter and my blood was congealing and I could feel my insides buckling. I walked back and forth shading my eyes, staring for his green top, begging and bargaining with God, mouth dry. Then I spotted him. He waved, embarrassed.

I swam over to him, he had seen me ages before. He had enjoyed watching me looking for him.