Wetsuits are like wearing clothes in the bath

WE’VE done our first house swap — with one of our sons, writes Damien Enright. 

His pretty little cottage in the village of Casa de la Seda (The House of Silk) in the Valley of the Great King (Valle Gran Rey) La Gomera, Canary Islands, in return for our somewhat larger gaff in the Court of the Son of Geoffrey, Courtmacsherry, West Cork, as called in our native tongue.

Today, on the black sand beach at the bottom of the Valley of the Great King, there were 35 people in the sea, including half a dozen small children running in and out of the medium-high waves. Nobody was wearing a wetsuit.