I hate sand. I love the coast; being from Birmingham, it’s always filled me with wonder. My Croatian grandad used to say that if you dipped your toe in the sea, you were connected to the whole world. This idea enchants me still. But I say again, I bloody hate sand. It gets everywhere. In sandwiches on the beach as a kid; in my toenails; in my hair; in every last crevice of my body, including my mind. And once it’s wherever it is, it’s always there.
Who are these people who love to feel the sand between their toes? When I walk on a beach, I am hermetically sealed from the knees down, but somehow it finds its way in. I might get myself a Hazmat suit – whatever it takes. It might be the Croat in me. On the Adriatic it’s all rocks. Some of them are decidedly jagged and sharp and difficult to negotiate. But I’ll take lacerated feet over sandy feet all day long.
And another thing: sand is untrustworthy, unreliable. When you go into the sea, the water keeps it in its place, and it’s nice underfoot. But it takes its revenge by hiding the odd razor stone to gash your foot – a wound that will, obviously, fill with sand as soon as you’re on dry land.
Dido once sang, of a holiday romance: “I’ve still got sand in my shoes / And I can’t shake the thought of you.” My version would be: “I’m finding flipping sand everywhere / I never want to see you again.”
How I loathe its hateful rasp on hard floors beneath my feet, or the feel of it burrowed into carpets for perpetuity. If barefoot, I totter on my heels to reduce the sticking area. It doesn’t help to have a sand magnet of a long-haired dog. No amount of hosing or brushing will shift it out of his fur. Yet within minutes he has distributed it everywhere. Before he goes on a beach again he’s off to the dog barber’s for the severest of treatments. I’ll rename him Kojak.
I read that in just one cubic metre of sand there are roughly 70bn grains. Pound for pound, that’s more discomfort and disappointment than any other substance on Earth. I hate sand.
Adrian Chiles is a writer, broadcaster and Guardian columnist
