I haven’t ever done any sailing. Apparently it’s great though. I had a friend called Wil who I used to work with in a bookshop who once asked me if I’d sailed. When I told him I hadn’t he told me I should, and he told me why. I don’t remember anything about what he said but I remember how he said it and I remember the look in his eyes. This was something he really loved: it was there in his face, in the tone of his voice, the passion he had for it. He wasn’t even talking to me anymore. He wasn’t really there. He was out at sea somewhere, far from the bookshop, and very happy. But I still haven’t tried it. And I left the bookshop not long after (to go and draw pictures for a living) and a while after that Wil left too (to go somewhere or other to learn how to build boats) and we lost touch. But I like to think that Wil’s still sailing, maybe on a boat he built himself.

So I haven’t ever sailed, and I’ve barely ever been in a boat at sea. I’ve been on a ferry a handful of times. Once each way going on a tour of Germany, Holland and … um, was it Belgium? I forget. It was a trip with a brass band when I was about eighteen I think. I didn’t play anything, but a bunch of friends were in the band and I just went along to make up the numbers. I wasn’t even a brass band roadie, I was just hanging about with my mates (Michael Casey on trombone, Andrew Shaw on B flat euphonium, I forget who else). 

And I remember, many years later, looking over the side of the ferry going over from Oban to Mull and seeing a seagull exactly matching the boat for speed, so that for long spells it looked as if it was just hanging there, perfectly still in the air. Oh, and there was a fishing trip with my dad and my brothers on a family holiday, out on a small boat from Dartmouth to catch some mackerel, and a touristy boat trip out on a catamaran from Barcelona. And, um, we had a little rubber dinghy that we used on family holidays that took ages to blow up with a foot pump. But that’s about it. Not exactly an old sea dog, I’m afraid.

Does that make me odd for choosing to set the whole of A Boy and a Bear in a Boat at sea? Not so much, I think. Because, though I’ve got no real experience of boats, I do love the sea. And the seaside. 

As a child I maybe loved the beach more than the water. My parents, my brothers, and I would create grand castles of sandy magnificence surrounded by complex systems of moats and pools on the beach at Sheringham. Then we’d sit back on the steep bank of pebbles and watch the incoming tide flatten our day’s work as the horizon sucked down the sun (in my mind’s eye the rising tide always coincided with the sunset, though this can’t, of course, have actually been the case). Then, quite possibly, we’d do it all again the next day. Nowadays, though, it’s the sea that does it for me. I could watch it and listen to it for hours. It calms me. Unless I actually go into it, which, with little prompting, I am likely to do, in which case it wakes me right up. Because, let’s be honest, this is England, and even when it’s warm it’s cold.

I like to swim, but I really like to swim in the sea. It’s even worth that ungainly walk out over the rocky bit, all jerky and angular and faintly worrying about those fish with the spines that can bury themselves in the sand and cause you a great deal of pain if you tread on them (what are they called? I can never remember. Perhaps it will come to me before I’ve finished writing). Rocks underfoot and you hope you’ll get to a nice comfy sandy stretch again soon as you wade out far enough to start swimming: just after you’ve stopped going on tippy toes trying to delay the shock of the first bit of water that reaches above your waist. And now it is above your waist (and it’s freezing, obviously) and you need to get your shoulders under as soon as possible because then it’s not so bad. Because that’s how it works, don’t ask me why: water level below the waist, fine: water level between waist and shoulders, unbearable; water level above the shoulders, fine again. It makes no sense, I know, but don’t blame me, I don’t make the rules. And then you’re in, and floating, a tiny, stupid speck of happy flotsam in the vast mysterious amazingness of the sea, held up, as close to flying as you’ll ever be under your own power. That’s really something isn’t it? You move your arms and legs about in this or that way, according to your personal preference, and you move about a bit with what you choose to believe is unusual grace and athleticism safe in the knowledge that you’re just far enough out that no one without binoculars can see you clearly enough to tell any different. And the waves come at you and lift you up and drop you down as they pass, and you swim out a bit and back and forth a bit, and then back in to the beach because – did I mention how cold it is? – you can only stand three or four minutes at a time. So you get back in far enough that you can stand up, walk even more stupidly back over the rocky bit (because now your muscles have got unused to the normal effects of gravity and are complaining at its return) find your way to your towel and clothes and dry yourself and get dressed again. And it was exciting, thrilling and elemental and brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! And your senses are jangling and you’re alive, alive-o, wide-eyed at the wonders of the world, awakened to all the fabulous possibilities of life by the gloriousness of the beautiful, magnificent sea…

And when you’ve stopped shivering in that alarming fashion, in an hour or so, you’ll probably consider going in again for another minute or three. But for now will someone please nip to the Lighthouse Café and fetch a nice cup of tea? Thanks very much.

We’ve holidayed in Cromer the last three summers, my own little family now, me, my partner Pam, and her daughter Mila. (Weaver fish – the spiny, scary fish are called weaver fish. It normally takes me longer than that to remember). Mila and I are pretty much in the sea every chance we get, though I’m certainly not too old to build a sandcastle or marvel at all the tiny, busy life in a rock pool too. And there’s the fantastic Henry Blogg Museum. It’s my favourite kind of museum: small and simple and dealing with a narrow subject. Henry Blogg (1876-1954) was Cromer’s greatest lifeboatman and the museum is a genuinely moving tribute to the quiet heroism of Henry in particular and the work of the RNLI in general. And a reminder that the beautiful, magnificent sea has its darker moods too, as the matter of fact records of the Cromer lifeboat’s doings, and of lives saved and lives lost, attest.

Maybe this is why I’ve never sailed: I know the sea has its dark side. I’m happy enough to swim in it, even when the waves are getting a bit tasty, but I know my limits. And it’s personal, being immersed in it, in a way that, surely, sailing can’t quite manage. I know when I’m a welcome guest in the water and I feel it when it’s not so happy with me and I get out. I like to think we understand each other, the sea and me (even if it did steal my glasses that one time) and I can’t stay angry at it. I’ve too much respect for it, too much love. 

Come on in, the water’s lovely.

Dave Shelton is the creator of slapstick noir graphic novel Good Dog, Bad Dog (winner of the inaugural Leeds Graphic Novel Award). His debut illustrated novel, A Boy and a Bear in a Boat, was published last month. Current work includes a new volume of Good Dog, Bad Dog and strips for The Phoenix comic.

More on Dave here.