The Tidal Year: a memoir on grief, swimming and sisterhood AS HEARD ON RADIO 4

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The arrow shows the average direction that the waves are going 1-2 miles out to sea. It indicates how sheltered the beach will be from these waves. Waves vary in direction, so we use ‘mean direction’. This represents an average weighted toward the most energetic waves. Wave period indicates how many waves you might experience in a set time. For example, if you waded at the beach for 15 minutes when the period was 6 seconds, you might have to jump over 150 waves! Onshore winds are when the wind blows from the sea in towards the land. When onshore winds are strong the waves are likely to be rough. There will not be much shelter from the wind. The earth isn't fixed rigidly in space, and as the moon orbits, it attracts the earth round in a monthly orbit of its own. So the earth has a small orbit caused by the moon in addition to its annual one round the sun. It is the gravitational pull of the moon on the earth which keeps the earth in its monthly orbit.

The difference between the height of waves offshore and the expected surf height at the beach is determined by 3 things: The amount that the tide rises (covering the beach) and falls (exposing the beach) changes every day. Large tides that create higher than average high tides, and lower than average low tides, are called ‘spring tides’. Spring tides can occur all year round and can be more dangerous as they lead to the tide coming in faster. If you’re close to the water, keep an eye on the waves to stop you or your belongings being swept away. Period of waves offshore

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Be aware that some parts of the beach could be cut off by the tide. This does not only occur at high tide; you could also get cut off while the tide is coming in To read the essays in our ongoing TIDAL 10 project, a diverse collection of writings that attempt to define the 2010s in music, visit TIDAL Read. For an extensive offering of best-of-year and best-of-decade playlists, as well as our recently launched year-end Now Playing initiative , sign up for TIDAL. – Ed.

A bit over a week after those protests in Puerto Rico, some 6,000 miles away on the island of Hawaii, Damian Marley joined in to help protestors at the base of Mauna Kea; the culturally sacred summit is the proposed location of the massive — and, as the protestors argue, destructive — Thirty Meter Telescope project. On July 29, Marley encouraged the preservationists with spoken word and song, including a take on his father’s “Get Up Stand Up.” The wind directions you can see are relative to the direction the shoreline of the beach faces. The arrow shows the compass direction of the wind (where up is north). If the arrow points from sea to land, the wind will be blowing from sea to land (‘onshore’). If the arrow points from land to sea, the wind will be blowing out to sea (‘offshore’). If the arrow points somewhere between the land and the sea, the wind will be blowing across the length of the beach (‘cross-shore’). Tide heights are shown in metres. Tide height is important because the sea can sometimes come further up the beach than normal at high tideand lower than normal at low tide. As the positions of Earth, Sun and Moon change in relation to each other, gravitational forces acting upon the oceans vary and it is these differences that cause fluctuations in the height of the sea. These changes in water level are often strongest at the coastline. On a beach, tides can be seen as the water comes up the beach on an incoming tide (flooding tide) or moves down the beach on a receding tide (ebbing tide). Two “live” sets, spread over a day, from the enigmatic super-DJ Marshmello, performed in the astonishingly popular virtual world of Fortnite? What more could a Gen-Z’er ask for?

OUTDOOR SWIMMER

The Tidal Year is some of the best writing on wild swimming that I have encountered.' MARIANNE LEVY Lifeguards can give you advice on waves if you’re planning to go into the water. Combining wave height, direction and period to give expected surf height Cross-shore winds are when the wind blows parallel to the shoreline. When these winds are strong, waves can become increasingly choppy. If you’re in a kayak or on a paddleboard, it might be hard to paddle along the beach into the wind. Metalheads cried into their Jägermeister throughout the fall, as thrash titans Slayer traversed North America on“The Final Campaign,”the last leg of their mammoth final world tour. (It ended on this date in Los Angeles.) Stretching far beyond a year and tallying nearly 150 shows, it was a proper sendoff for the metal hall-of-famers but still a heartbreaker for fans of loud and fast.

Tides refer to the rise and fall of a body of water, most commonly seen in oceans. Tides are caused by the interaction between the Moon, Sun and Earth. The tide times tell you what time the water will be at its highest point (high tide) and at its lowest point (low tide). The tide rises and falls much more slowly around low and high tide than in the hours either side of mid-tide. The area of beach covered by the tide can change very fast from shortly after low tide up to an hour before high tide. The pool at Ilfracombe — and its complex network of six tunnels — was man-made in Victorian times. It was formed by damming the water, so it’s covered by the sea twice a day. When I arrived, the pool was submerged. I’d have to be patient. Swimming was, in many ways, a parallel exercise to grief and I found that the learnings were often the same. It ebbed and flowed. It was stormy, then calm.As Freya travels further from London, she finds herself closer to memories of her brother. With every swim, and every stranger they meet in the water, the challenge becomes more than just a way to explore the coast, but a journey of self-discovery. Welcome to 19 for ’19: The TIDAL Year in Review — our guide to 2019’s most memorable sounds, stars and moments. This genre-spanning exercise moves chronologically through the year, using 19 notable dates and events as the jumping-off point for discussion of related music milestones. Of course we couldn’t include every single artist, song, album and happening that impressed us in 2019, but this calendar of sorts is a great place to begin reflecting on an outstanding year in music that often felt like one continuous highlight reel. Reads like a lusciously languid dream sequence... It's not just about how water can redeem us but how words can too. A powerful debut.' CHRISTOPHER BEANLAND Take a plunge into this tender exploration of grief, rage, love, loss and sisterhood in the modern age.

Marshmello, live in the real world, at the Fortnite World Cup at Queens’ Arthur Ashe Stadium. (Credit: Mike Stobe/Getty) In other live-electronic highlights, Aphex Twin triumphed at Coachella, giving his first performance at the festival in over a decade. A couple days prior, he’d returned to New York City for his first booking there since the 1990s, at the Brooklyn venue Avant Gardner. Sadly, 2019 also brought the shuttering of theRed Bull Music Academy,whose concerts, journalism, panels and other programming were a coup to electronic music and agreat many other genres. Astonishing in its frankness, raw, poignant, bracing, funny; a very human story.' DEREK NIEMANN, Guardian country diarist If the offshore waves are directed away from the beach and have a short wave period (less than 6 seconds) then the wave height at a flat beach is likely to be smaller than the height of the waves offshore.

The pull of the moon's gravity is just enough to keep the earth in its monthly orbit, but it is a bit stronger on the surface of the earth facing the moon (near side) and weaker on the far side. This means that on the near side, the moon tends to pull anything that's free to move towards it. In the same way, on the far side, there isn't quite enough gravitational pull, so that anything that's free to move tends to fly off, away from the moon. So on the near side they are pulled into a bulge towards the moon, and on the far side, they pile up into a bulge away from the moon.