A s I slip out of my clothes, my stomach pinches with fear. The beach – Pevensey Bay in East Sussex – is inky black and eerily empty. The sound of slurping seawater seems noisier than usual, the air smells brinier than it does during the day, and the night breeze feels cool and sharp.
My previous efforts at night swimming have been unsuccessful – the current too strong, the waves too wild, my imagination too extravagant. But tonight I’m determined. My daughter Imogen shouts to encourage me and the emergence of a full moon steadies my nerves.
Within moments I am bobbing about amid glittering moonshine, laughing and gasping, and wondering why it has taken me half a century to do something as simple and magical as a moonlit dip. Night swimming is the latest in a series of nocturnal journeys that have changed how my family and I view darkness. What was once a time for moving indoors and turning on lights has become a place for travel and adventuring.
We call these lightless excursions our “night journeys”, and they began during a long stint of insomnia triggered by grief. Reluctant to take medication, I slowly overcame my dread of darkness by embracing my wakeful nights, seeing them as a gift of extra, exotically located time. My first insomniac months were spent reading, writing and drawing – indoors.
But one spring night I pulled a mattress on to my balcony and lay gazing upwards at a black sky sequined with stars. The sense of restful space stretching endlessly u.