Something About Mud
Once, when I was maybe four or five, I got my wellies stuck in the mud down at the creek near my home, called Scott’s Quay.
We were with some people, I can’t remember who, possibly picking crabs or mussels — my parents’ attempt, I assume, as staunch out-of-towners, to feel like real Cornish locals. I had pushed my luck, despite no doubt being warned, and waded one step too deep into the mud, until I lost all control, thrusting my heel up and down, only to be met by the merciless sucking, squelching, burping cry of the creek bed that flooded into my wellies, and between by toes.
And I probably cried too, feeling cheated by the mud that had seemed so inviting and unassuming. My father must have plucked me straight from those small boots and carried me home with wet, cold feet.
To be honest, I am unsure if this memory is real or completely fabricated, but it is one I have carried with me for over 20 years, nonetheless.
Since it is a new year and I am of a new age, I was hoping to write something reflective and sincere to sum up the past 365 days.
A year that started at Heathrow Airport, feeling foolish and confused in my children’s São Paulo football shirt, and ended in a flat in South London, watching fireworks through the window, with a belly full of just the right amount of Prosecco to make Teo’s table games feel more like the best fun ever and less like medieval torture. Daniel Craig, Craig David, Daniel Craig David — that New Year’s Eve, they were the same name spluttered too many times on such warm and boozy breath.
And here we are now, 11:51 p.m., day seven of this new year, and all I can think about is that mud down at Scott’s Quay.
The briny marble of blue and grey formed from layers of shells - of crabs and mussels and periwinkles and oysters, sand, slate, and kelp. All of it pressed and compressed under the heavy weight of a century’s worth of water. I used to run in it, leaving sticky knee-high stockings on my legs, and the smell of the creek on my skin for days after.
I am thinking about the mud because, a few days before Christmas, whilst visiting home, I dipped my boots in it cautiously, respectfully, as I have learnt to do from my very own old wives’ tale. As I did so, I looked at the small sailboat leaned up against the old granite of the quayside wall and thought how strange it was that one could lap the world ten times, take 100 lovers, meet 10,000 faces, ride on horseback, motorbike, train, and car, through sickness and heartbreak, joy and delusion, and still land back with their feet in the mud — and the knowledge that that boat there, never moved. Not once.
The sound of the metal wire tapping against the mast in the wind like a metronome sounds exactly the same as it did 20 years ago.
We are all hurtling so indigestibly fast in every direction at once, that I have never found greater comfort in an unmoving object and place - to be reminded that not everything is constantly shifting all the time. Some things stay entirely the same.
Right now, I am at the line, limbering up, refreshing emails, and waiting… for the thing to start. And when the gun goes off, I will clutch the tops of my boots to make sure that they don’t get left, legless in the mud.
Licking salt from my lips, 2026, the big year, or who’s to say?
Edith xxx