Crescent beach over the ages.

I am, as you might expect if you are a reader of any duration, loyally reporting to you from my summer perch in Noya Scotia. I cannot remember a year when I have not been on Crescent beach, Lunenburg County, by July 15th where, on a good day, the water temperature is struggling to find seven or eight degrees C.

I have been coming here for a very long time.

Some years ago, in the dark days before my marriage, I remember this beach coming between myself and a lady friend of mine at the time. It was a particularly busy November, including much travel and late-night work. My friend, who was in the television business, was having the same kind of month. At one point midweek I said "This is crazy, let's get away to a beach on the weekend." I said be ready at 4 p.m. Friday and we will head to the airport.

It was not until we approached security (an unusual degree of trust for a television lady) that she enquired just exactly which beach were we heading for.

I said, "Well Crescent Beach of course."

"Where is that?" she asked.

"On the south shore of Nova Scotia?" I replied.

Silence. More silence.

"It's November!!!" she said.

"I know its November," I said. "Best time to be there? Did you bring your ski jacket for the wind? Incredibly refreshing this time of year."

"No," she said. "I have shorts. I have suntan lotion. Are you insane? You said beach. You said cheap flight. You said chill out! (Im embarrassed about that part). In November that means Florida!!!

I do not need to tell you more. I have not seen this lady once in more than a decade, but I am sure she is doing just fine.

I was thinking all of this the other day as I walked the beach with my wife Kashka, my four-year-old daughter Jackie, my 80-year-old uncle Charlie and his friend Ruby, who seemed quite content to walk the beach in her Sunday-best shoes, having not been fully briefed on the plan to walk Crescent beach.

What a difference a decade can make.

I have just bought a cottage down here after thinking about it for the past 30 summers in row. Notwithstanding my love of sea, and my personal imitation of some kind of migratory bird when it comes to Crescent beach, I would never have bought a cottage if it were not for my wife.

She is a homemaker.

She loves Nova Scotia, but prefers to avoid the eclectic nature of how Nova Scotians equip their tourist facilities. It can range from the sublime to the ridiculous, which is fine with me, but hard on one with more exacting standards.

I have a short memory. The place we have been renting the last few years is wonderful, except for a kitchen lacking numerous strategic utensils, a front room that is hard to breath in because of the mildew, and a bed that is so bad I have always put my back out within days.

We marvel at how people keep coming back, knowing what we know.. Ahhh...but the view is spectacular.

My wife will tolerate a certain amount of whimsy, but within defined limits.

I, on the other hand, will tolerate an unlimited amount of whimsy, as long as it is my whimsy.

This I am told has more to do with being an only child than whimsiness in general, but that for another day.

Anyway, as it turns out, our cottage has more than a hundred neigbours on the lot next door. It is a cemetery. Some of the inhabitants have been there for a hundred years. Next door to the cemetery is the Fort Point Museum, which is where Champlain first stopped in 1632 on his way to fame and fortune up and around the coast.

A few weeks ago my wife came down early to supervise some required renovations to the property. She called me one afternoon in an excited tone of voice and said she had bought me a fantastic gift.

"How wonderful?" I said. "What could it be? Perhaps a wet suit for a little afternoon bathing? No. Binoculars to invade the privacy of boaters on the Lahave river from our deck? No. OK. I give up. What is it?"

"A plot," she said.

"A what?" I asked.

"A plot," she repeated.

"You're not serious?" I said.

"Of course I am," she said. "They were having a sale and for $79 you have your own plot. Got myself one to.

My, how the worm has turned.

Michael Atkins is president of Laurentian Publishing.