Tide

Last week I stayed at a cottage in Devon, so close to the sea that the windows were splashed with salt water.

On weekends, the beach below was covered with intrepid Brits: children in pink wetsuits, old people in folding chairs, couples in their cups. Next door was a beach shop, for the obligatory boogie boards, sunblock, ice cream and tea.

The entire cove was presided over by a hilltop church that looks like a castle, with an English flag waving gallantly from the tower.

It turns out to be an ancient church – seven centuries – so the graveyard is quite crowded. As you walk amongst graves so old the names have disappeared, and graves of gone babies, and last year’s graves, it’s impossible not to feel a certain… weight.

I grew up spending summers at a beach resort originally founded by Methodists: yet completely graveless.

If we wanted a scare, we crossed the sticky boardwalk, entered the clanging, you-win noise of FunLand, and waited in line forever at the Haunted Mansion. Until a cart came to rumble us through ominous gates, into darkness. Where, always in the same spot, a skeleton leapt out, inches from our skulls, to say boo.