By Douglas Kruger
CHRISTMAS Day. 10.58am. I’m on the beach at Havre des Pas, leaning slightly against a 25mph wind, wondering if this was my best idea. My wife yells: “Take it off!” and my son just laughs at my plight.
One year back, I watched the Christmas swimmers and had a regrettable notion: “That looks fun”. Worse, I articulated it to witnesses. “Think I’ll do it next year!”
Well, the bill came due. I said I would, so I had to. Hadn’t exactly counted on it snowing the night before – first time it’s done so on Christmas since people wore bellbottoms – but that’s life for you.
I look at my destination. It’s a funny thing, a rock pool. Basically, a bunch of Victorians looked at the north Atlantic and thought: “We should slice off a segment of that. Keep it for recreational purposes.” And they did. And now it’s there.
10.59am. Off comes the Dryrobe. And my shirt.
At this point, I create a quick video detailing my last will and testament. I leave everything to my wife and son. Said wife is filming me with unreasonable glee, asking why my teeth are making that noise. Oh, and although the son in question made the same promise, he then picked up a cold two days prior, conveniently disqualifying himself at the last moment. The little weasel.
I’m down to my togs now and there’s nothing for it. Time’s up, people are watching. I must forge in. I can hear the anguished wails of those poor souls who have already waded out into that slimy horror, reeling and sobbing and thrashing. I head toward the sounds.
11am. My naked toes make contact with the water. Oh, sweet mother of potatoes! No, no, no, that can’t be right! Flying donkeys of ancient Absalom – it stings like my feet have been chopped by a slasher villain wielding a ferocious pick-axe. Have they? I look down. They’re still there, every digit, even if I can’t move them and even if they now look as red as beets.
Onward.
I glance back at my wife. I wonder if she is already picking out her next spouse. She gives a little wave. She is urging me on, saying: “Do it, do it!” It is in this manner that I learn she might not actually be entirely trustworthy. I make a mental note to the effect.
My kneecaps meet the frigid surface. Stonking honkballs! Lady Godiva juggling frozen moon waffles! I will never dance again. No part of the human anatomy was designed to endure such conditions. It feels like I’m being stabbed.
There’s worse to come, and it comes quicker than I expect, because once my shorts make contact, they do something unfortunate, soaking up the ice water like a sponge before I can prepare myself. Oh, sweet merciful heavens, not the garden of good and evil!
I make a sound like the guy in Alien when he explodes from the inside out. But the water just keeps soaking northward.
There’s no escape, and then it happens. I shall never again be quite the man I was. My only consolation is the high notes I will now be able to hit, and am apparently hitting, for I hear someone screaming, and it turns out to be me. I am losing “man-points” with my wife by the minute. Come on! You can do this!
I’m now up to my waist, which means I feel like I’ve been cut cleanly in half. And there’s nothing else for it. I must either chicken out and go back, or accept my fate and just hurl myself forward. Remaining in stasis is worse and the wind is skinning my shoulders, so I make the call, surrender my body to the deep and to the fates and jump.
For a split second, I see my ancestors in heaven. They wave, calling to me. Then the white-out recedes and I can see again. I am still embodied on Earth in a rock pool, in winter, on Christmas Day.
I have an amazing realisation. My heart and brain are going to shut down. Just pack up shop and go. It’s now a race to see which does it first.
I have never felt such physical agony in all my life. Not even when I was a young skateboarder and landed, foot flat, on a nail sticking straight up out of a board. Not even when my folks got me a pogo-stick, and I jumped upward into a window sill. Not even when I tripped over a shoelace and ran head-first into a drainpipe, putting myself into hospital for three days.
But this! Sweet torrents of marauding tempestuousness.
An age of man passes. In the time that I am under, nations rise and fall. Later, I will check the video and discover that it was actually two seconds. My head stayed above water.
But it is done. My business here is concluded. My vow is kept, my honour is intact. Provided I survive.
I must wade back to shore, very, very quickly or accept my own demise.
I genuinely feel as though my system is shutting down and there are seconds left in the tank. I wade/splosh/run back to shore, the bracing winds now sandpapering my sodden skin. My wife tells me she has never seen me so red – not even when I forgot sunscreen that day and fell asleep on the beach.
She hands me a thermos of hot coffee and I take it with both stumps. Fingers are a memory from a past life. I have no sticky-out bits left. They have all fallen off or retreated into the sanctum of my core.
“How was it?” she asks brightly.
“Brilliant,” I say, sipping my coffee. “Really good. Worth every second. You should do it next year!”
“You think?”
“Oh, absolutely!”
And now we wait.
Douglas Kruger is a Hall of Fame speaker and bestselling business author based in St Helier. His books are all available on Amazon and Audible.
