This will be the first year for a long time where I won’t have had a chance to spend at least part of it with my best friend. There is a certain relish with which I approach the challenge of hiding and wrapping best friends presents each year. We both know that no matter where I hide them, however carefully they are mixed, unlabelled with other presents they will be found and opened before Christmas. This year, I convince myself would be the year I won. I’d get a present hidden so well it wouldn’t be found, unwrapped and left staring me in the face days early - a glaring monument to my regular yuletide failure.

Watching my children open Christmas presents is truly one of the great pleasures in life. Watching my best friend open them (knowing that they have already been inspected fully in advance) is not even a close second, it’s a tie for first. Eating too much turkey, talking a walk in the snow, falling asleep in front of the television and farting quietly during The Queen. These are the shared experiences that make Christmas special and this year my best friend is 3000 miles away. It’s not really a proper Christmas without your best friend and my Best Friend isn’t just for Christmas. (See below)
 

 The problem with telling anyone that, is they immediately think of a beach in the Bahamas with soft white sand and clear blue water. Anyone that is, who hasn’t ever been to a beach in Wales or more specifically, the beach in Towyn.

Despite the fact it’s a seaside resort town, I suspect the locals (average age 103) are a bit ashamed of their beach. Either that or they like it so much they are trying to hide it from all the summer visitors. Every other seaside town I’ve visited is built around the beach or waterfront. In Towyn, they’ve hidden the beach. From the coast road, you can’t actually see any water. To get there you have to cross a either a dog turd littered piece of unpleasant fenced scrubland, or walk through the most miserable of environments, a semi derelict, off season funfair. Then you have to get across the railway line, which in itself is hardly inviting being liberally posted with such helpful signs as “not a public right of way’. After that you are presented with something that looks a bit less friendly than the Berlin Wall. The concrete steps up and over the wall are just a bit too high to be easy to walk up and for a two and half year old are something of a mountaineering challenge. Finally, wind swept and wet (because it’s raining again) you get to the top of the wall and look down the death defying oversized downward steps towards the beach.

Grey pointy rocks, broken bottles, rusty cans and more dog turds than you could ever step in. It’s about now that you understand the wall.

So Dylan and I went down onto the beach and threw rocks into the waves.  This is pretty good entertainment for a couple of hours if you are only Two and a bit. I threw some small rocks, then some big ones then looked for some good skipping stones. I’m not very good at getting stones to bounce off the water but it helps to pass the time. Then I saw it, the perfect skipping stone. It was on its side, just next to a big puddle of something that looked like crude oil. It looked like it had been machined, so perfect and regular were its proportions. Flat and round and just a little dimpled across the faces for extra lift.

If I throw the perfect stone it will be gone forever. If I don’t throw it, I’ll never know if it was really any good. I gave some serious thought to putting it an envelope and sending it to my friend Dan who could skip a brick across a pond so well it would bounce out the other side and smack some hapless passer-by in the head.

I was weighing the options when

“Daddy”

“Yes Dylan”

“I want a wee wee”

“OK, we’ll go home”

“No, I want a wee wee now, on the stones…. It’s coming out”

Oh crap. No time to think about spin and angles and velocity. Just throw the thing.

1             2         3     4    5   6  7 89plop

Perfect.

Meanwhile, back in reality, Dylan has got his pants down but is peeing in his boots.