People walk along the footpath next to the ocean.

Sometimes they do it for exercise; young girls in sleeveless t-shirts or slightly overweight girls walking with their friends to encourage them to do something about the fact that they like food too much, or perhaps the wrong sort of food. I identify with the fat girls. I used to be like them before I became too old to care and now I just watch.

I watch a young man stop and lift a young boy up so he can see the ocean over the fence. Actually there is a beach before the ocean and some bushes before that but you can see the ocean and the young boy does. I used to go to that beach. I wonder when it became so difficult to walk down past the bushes to a place where I can lie on the sand after a swim in the ocean. Now I watch it from the car though the swimming is cooler. I wonder if the young boy thinks so too. He is pulling at his father’s arm in that impatient way that young boys have and I imagine he is whinging a little and saying how much cooler it would be if they went for a swim.

An elderly couple walks past. She grips his arm like she is worried if she lets go he will float away.  He is much bigger than her, and wider, so if he did float away, it’s doubtful she could catch him and, anyway, he has nothing to float away to. He still has urges but he doesn’t have money, so he can’t afford anything younger and he’s used to what he’s got. The young boy wriggles down his father’s skinny body and runs to the old man, the young man, who I’m imagining is the father, apologises profusely. They must be strangers.

More girls walk past, then a young man on a bicycle. He chats to the girls. I wonder if he knows them.  Maybe one of them will meet her future husband.

Older women walk past, maybe in their fifties. One of them is wearing a spotted top. The other woman is in shorts but shouldn’t be. I imagine they are on diets and exercise is part of the routine. They do it together so they can talk along the way, then afterwards they feel virtuous so they have a milkshake at the beachfront canteen. They look out across the water, thinking of it. They aren’t getting any thinner.

Neither am I.