Tide Tables

Today I have managed to fulfil an ambition I've held for several years. It wasn't a majorly important one - in fact I suspect it may be quite sad, as ambitions go - but I don't care. I am very happy to inform the world that I am now the proud owner of a local Tide Table.

Ever since I heard of the existence of this majestic document, detailing predictions of the times of high tide throughout the year, I have longed to be one of the privileged few to be able to consult its pages. Casual beach walks would be transformed; no longer a mere tourist, I would be able to predict the best moment at which to swim; to choose the ideal place for a sandcastle so that it would be just ready to defend when the waters began to surge around it; to say, with an informed air, "Well, the tide is going out, so it doesn't matter where we put our deckchairs." [1]

I jest. But truly, it is an interesting document to me, probably because I don't understand tides at all, and find them quite fascinating. Of course the ambition to own a tide chart was probably in reality an ambition to have a legitimate reason to own one - and I consider living three minutes' walk from the sea to be quite legitimate [2]. Should I wish to view the next high tide I must venture out at 4.50 in the morning; my subsequent opportunity would be at 5.23 tomorrow afternoon. I was surprised, actually, how quickly the time of high tide changes. There seems to be a difference of 40 to 50 minutes between high tide one afternoon and the next; for no particular reason I used to imagine that the difference would be much smaller. But I learn from the BBC's Tide FAQ page (!) that high tides occur about every 12 hours 25 minutes. I am also excited [3] to discover that the highest spring tides [4] occur close to the equinoxes. The autumnal equinox is about to occur, and indeed I note from my copy of the local Tide Tables (tee hee!) that Sunday morning's tide is predicted to be a particularly high one.

I am, however, unlikely to be getting up at 5.30 in the morning for the purpose of viewing the spectacle.

[1] Sentence for illustrative purposes only - I don't think I've ever actually taken a deckchair to the beach.

[2] Not to mention rather exciting.

[3] Mildly excited.

[4] That's 'spring' as in 'bounce', by the way, referring to the highest tide in a lunar month; its antithesis, the neap tide, is worth mentioning simply because it has a great name.