Went for a swim on Saturday 11th January after two days without. I had company, and the company suggested we explore one of Auckland’s ‘best kept secrets’, a beach in Te Atatu Peninsula called Kelvin Strand. We attended during high tide, which was at 4.41pm. But you wouldn’t have known it. After wading for far too long through squishy mud, we were only knee deep in water. ‘Swimming’ was more a case of crawling.

Lacklustre photo of a lacklustre beach with the Auckland CBD in the distance

Months have passed. I’ve been stranded at Kelvin Strand. The previous paragraph was written in January but saved as a draft and not published. Subsequently, many beaches were visited but the writing stopped because my circumstances changed and a couple of months later the beach visits stopped because the weather became wintry.

Lacklustre beach on a lacklustre day. A tiny Auckland Harbour bridge is on the horizon towards the right

Take, for example, the visit to Kelvin Strand. I really do try to like all beaches but this one really is a hopeless little scrap of accumulated sand. We had to walk such a very long way out across barely submerged, slimy estuarine muds in a vain search for anything that even slightly resembled a swim. We. We are no longer. Our attempts to find a swim at Kelvin Strand were in vain, and (it turns out) so was our attempt to develop a relationship. My previously fond memories of our summer beach adventures now inevitably take on a darker hue and wintry chill.