National Theatre Wales Community

Day 97 - The paddling pool, Aberystwyth sea front

I collected Poppy late on in the day and agreed to take her to the paddling pool on the prom. Having not really thought it through I imagined that paddling in a paddling pool meant getting your feet wet. It took about 10 minutes for her clothes to become soaked through and the painful negotiations to commence. There could be two outcomes; one, she paddled wearing just a pair of pants and two, we squeezed the water out of her clothes as best we could and went home to get a swimming costume. We chose the second option as the first is the kind of thing that stays with a child well into adulthood.

Aberystwyth sea front is a vastly different place in the sun, fires litter the beach and the smell of food cooking wafts up on the warm breeze. Bathers and paddlers, strollers and swimmers. I look at groups of students experiencing what might be their final day in this town and think of my own time at university, the ten year reunion in which no-one seemed to have changed. Come October the stormy sea will make even standing on the beach a tough task.

Locations and places aren't fixed. The seasons and the weather alter the ground and change the way that we inhabit the locations. Located performance might reflect these changes. Weather might have agency as much any human participant.