I have the update you have all been waiting for! The sun finally came out! It was hot! We made it to the beach and even into the water!

Which got me thinking about bathing. I was just paddling but Brodie lay in the shallows and splashed around. Not swimming, but bathing?

The Five bathe a lot – I always see this as just lounging around in the water, perhaps playing a little, floating, splashing, and so on. Not really swimming, at least, not seriously – though online definitions include swimming too.

It’s a funny word – made funnier by me typing and reading it over and over until it has lost meaning. I can see why it is used – we have bathing for bathing eyes, wounds, sore feet etc, so the general use of immersing in water works for going into water. But it’s so close to bath that I’m sure some children are reading it as bath-ing rather than bathe-ing. I don’t remember if I did that – and Brodie has never asked what it means – I think it’s fairly obvious from the context.

I never quite pictured the Five making these sorts of faces when bathing, though.

Anyway – here’s hoping for more bathing weather to come as it’s cooler and hazy today with rain forecast tomorrow.

Letters to Enid part 48

and

Reading the Famous Five to Brodie part 7

Then, without even a towel to dry themselves on, they tore down to the lake-side, eager to plunge into its blue coolness.

It was very warm at the edge of the water, but further in, where it was deep, the lake was deliciously cold. All the children could swim strongly, and they splashed and yelled in delight. The bottom of the lake was sandy, so the water was as clear as crystal.

When they were tired they all came out and lay on the warm sandy bank of the lake. They dried at once in the sun. Then as soon as they felt too hot in they went again, squealing with joy at the cold water.

‘What gorgeous fun to come down here every day and bathe!’ said Dick. ‘Get away, Timmy, when I’m swimming on my back. Timmy’s enjoying the bathe as much as we are, George.’

I had to go with a bathing quote obviously, was going to use one from Five Run Away Together but there isn’t an accompanying image. So instead here’s a quote, and image, from Five Go Off in a Caravan where they do lake-bathing rather than sea-bathing.