We had tried to leave the pub but we got only a few steps outside before it was clear that we would be soaked to the skin on the two hundred yard walk back down to the Cottage. The wind was blowing the rain hard so it came at you in a thick wet squall and the road was slick with running water. We pushed our way back through the door of the pub and shook the water from our coats and hair.

‘You won’t be going far if you’re worried about a bit of wet like that’ said the man from his stool by the bar. ‘Weather like that is not much more than a heavy thick mist and there’s not much point in getting damp in that. Unless you are out there in the water and you’re drowning you are going to get dry again after a while so you may as well get it over with and you’ll be dry soon enough.’

He smiled at the pints that were being poured for us at the bar ‘But wetting yourself some more on the inside will help should you need to get wet on the outside later.’

So we took off our coats and put them in the corner and stood back at the bar. The pints were put in front of us and we picked them up with wet cold hands.

‘You only think that it is wet here on account of the mist and rain but it isn’t really any of those things. We are here so close to the sea which is as wet as you can get that the and air comes straight off the surface of water and it can be blown by the wind or sucked up by the heat of the sun but all the air is is the clear water being pulled up from out there and being dropped back down again. and either you can see like on a night like this and it is thick enough to wet your skin through your coat or there is nothing to see but as you draw in your breathe your can taste how thick it is with the oxygen you suck in.’

‘Breathe in the air like that and it is not much different to sucking your pints.’