Dreaming of dolphins - Nick Green
A t school I was voted the guy least likely to tear off his clothes and run into the sea. That’s not actually true. But it could be. I don’t do crazy impulses. I’m the man who holds up the coffee shop queue before ordering the same latte as ever. I use SatNav. On the train. You certainly wouldn’t catch me braving the English Channel in October, without so much as a towel to hand. And yet, on one autumn afternoon several years ago, I did. And I’m still trying to understand why. My wife and I were in Lyme Regis, in Dorset, walking along the sea front. We spotted a commotion in the water. In the midst of a group of swimmers, something dark kept bobbing up. We saw a fin. It was like a scene from Jaws, except the screams were not of terror but delight. Then shouts from around us confirmed it: ‘A dolphin!... A bottlenose dolphin!’ My first fear – that the creature must be in distress, to be so close to the beach – vanished almost at once. The dolphin was clearly reveling in th...