Strange Day

I was headed for the big sleep!
I was panting heavily and I knew before I had any chance of catching my breath another huge wave would crash over me ducking me deep and holding me down.
I was freezing cold and tired but only a few hundred yards from the steps to safety... it didn't look like I was going to make it!

Barrabboooommmm, another wave crashed over shoving me several feet below the surface. I struggled to hold back the panic as my aching lungs screamed for air and I desperately fought against the force that was pushing me down.

Only minutes earlier I had been taunting the sea, laughing as the giant waves came roaring toward me "Is this the best you can do Neptune? Not bad but hardly testing. Hahaha."
Of course I was further out then, the waves were huge but i could swim up them and the only danger was that I would hurt my back as, stretched like a bow, I plummeted down the other side.
Just occasionally there would be a huge wave which would break early and turn into that deadly white avalanche that catches you and tumbles you and thrusts you deep below the surface... but you have seen it coming, taken a few deep breaths and it's exhilerating. Then, slowly, the cold starts to catch up with you and your body starts to stiffen and you know it's time to head home. You start to swim toward the shore but somehow you seem to be making little headway, ah well, no real rush. You're tiring so you swap onto your back, keeping an eye out for the big waves so that you can turn around and swim into them. Eventually you swim past a yellow bouy that tells you it's not far now... Just past the bouy, surprisingly, the sea starts to get much more dangerous. You realise it's the conflict, the
irresisitible force meeting the immoveable and finding a violent compromise - breakers, those white avalanches.

So like I said, I knew I was headed for the big sleep.
I remembered the dead dolphin and the young, grey, penguin I'd seen only a couple of days before - both children, alone: wondered if it was an omen that would somehow help in my voyage to the beyond.
Suddenly, I had an intuition, I stopped swimming and just for a split-second one of my toes brushed against something gritty.
It gave me hope!
It was several minutes before I next felt anything solid - felt like hours but must have been minutes (all the while breathless, continually fighting to the surface to be ducked again by the next wave) - and this time one of my feet actually stood on the sand.
It's not very clear after that but somehow, eventually, I managed to stand up. The sea kept bowling me over again but at least
I didn't need to swim like a frantic fish and I started to catch my breath at last. I headed toward some stone steps that would take me to safety but as I neared them the sea picked me up and threw me against the harbour wall. I skirted along the harbour wall bracing myself against the impact of each succesive wave until somehow I managed to reach the steps and stagger up. Halfway down was a man in uniform and, still disorientated, I
thought it must be a coastguard. It turned out he was a bus driver. He had seen me struggling from his bus which was parked at the turn-around at the top of the steps.
He asked if I was alright and assured me he had been very worried and just about to come to my assistance - which was kind. Of course by the time I was in an assistable state i didn't really need the assistance... I thanked him. He probably thought I was just a tourist who had ventured into the sea and found it rougher than expected and struggled to get back out - true in a way I suppose.

I left the driver by his bus and staggered across the access road, over a little fence which led to a disused path which meandered up the green hillside. I went to get my stuff which was in a small backpack hidden under a bush and to my surprise i found a note stuffed in the top written on a cross-dressing pamphlet - an amourous invitation with a text number and signed SOON! I don't think i would have been tempted but the choice was not mine as, again, fate had intervened and when i had picked the note up with my wet fingers I had chanced to touch the phone number and the ink had run leaving the number unreadable.
Strange day!