THE MAN IN THE BLUE CANOE

There's no wifi for miles and I've almost run out of mobile data. It's okay though, it means I truly have to switch off.

After buying a hat, racing into the sea and standing there while the cool waves lapped about my ankles, I sat with the Intrepids on the warm beach.

There's the man with the blue canoe

His wetsuit glistens as if it were new

The paddle in hand

His toes in the sand

A statue he is, so noble, so grand

And waiting for something to do

I read another Ray Bradbury short story. Why are they all about death? I mean Ray, you're an awesome writer, and your descriptive prose is second-to-none, but you seem to be obsessed with terminality. This one was all about a farmer who cut down a field of wheat that represented all of humanity, including himself and his family. The last was about a car accident, and the one before was about an old lady who turned out to to be a ghost! What about robots and time travel for a change? I'm on holiday!

Then, after some lunch and a cup of tea, watching the tide, we drove (I drove) to St Davids.

St Davids, the UK's smallest city, is essentially a village and a cathedral. We had a look round. The cathedral was stunning - vaulted, hammer-beam roof like the underside of a ship; tall, strong, stone arches; latticed and stained-glass windows that let the sunlight dapple in to paint the flagstones with patchwork light. Best of all of course, the cool air of an old church on a hot summer's day.

Or perhaps even better - the practising organist, hidden behind the pipes. He struck up a complicated medley of organ tunes that none of us recognised. My Mum, who loves organ music, was in her element while the long pipes rumbled through the stones.

"Right, what do you want to do now," asked my Dad, outside in the baking heat. I think he was just glad he could stop whispering.

"I know what I'd like!" I said, suddenly sounding like I was five years old, "Ice-creams on the cliff top!"

We didn't find a cliff-top, but we did find ice-creams. I made short work of mine, trying to put into practice my long-held method for eating them before they melt. Then my Dad and I left my Mum reading a book, while he and I walked up the coastal path and talked about greenhouses, growing onions, and how to connect up a water butt to the guttering.

This feels like a real holiday then, I suppose. Time stretches longer, pressure is a memory and the world is cloudless, sunswept and hot. It feels almost exactly like what I needed.

Of course, I am still tweaking those balances. I went for another walk on the beach at sunset, just to get some air and some space.

As I dropped onto the sand, I noticed a group of people standing in a long line at the water's edge. They were silhouetted by the sun of course, so it was difficult to know which way round they were standing, but it was deliberate, whatever it was. They were about five feet apart and motionless. I had a theory.

I did the only obvious thing to do. I joined them. I stood at the end of the line and stared out to sea too, my sunglasses on and my hood over my head. The water shone like silk, the waves rippled calmly in, and a line of twenty people turned to look at me.

I smiled back.

"Um, do you mind me asking," I said to the nearest one, "Are you praying?"

"Sorta," he said, with an American accent. "We're at the end of a sort of pilgrimage. We've spent some time with God and we're throwing things from the past, baggage, into the ocean before we go home tonight."

It turned out that they were a youth group from a church in North Carolina and they'd been here for a week. This final baggage-throwing exercise was their last thing to do. I asked if I could join them, picked up a shell from the wet sand, thought about it for a while and then hurled it into the sea.

Well, I'm on holiday - it's exactly the time to let go of stuff, isn't it?