Flakfortet
To experience the pleasure of swimming in a canal in the sea we sail to Flakfortet. The prow of the boat scythes through the sea and the blue landscape glitters as rays of sunlight dance off the water. The sun has followed us our travels on these northern waterways for what seems like an age. The heat is unyielding. The written word cuts its own path through an untrammelled notebook. Days merge into each other in the company of wife, children and friends as the land rests, or dies, in the heat.
Flakfortet is an artificial island, built in the early 1900s to protect Copenhagen from would-be invaders. Created from sand and containers of reinforced concrete filled with sand and cement, the island is largely covered by a fort. The water surrounding it is no more than five metres deep.
The Danish army retreated from Flakfortet in 1969. Abandoned to autumn storms, it was forced to watch as the sea reclaimed what once belonged to it. Granite slabs from the fort fell into the canal, the pounding of the waves smashed through the northern breakwater and the sand on the slopes was blown away. Some years later, Man returned to repair the breakwater and restore the fort.
We climb the hill to the lighthouse on the highest point of the island. Lilac bushes line the path and the view catches the breath. To the south is the isle of Saltholm, a long sandy spit with small green hillocks. You feel a bit like you’re sitting on a raft and could just cut the moorings and float off into the wide blue yonder. Yet there’s no urge to do so. Why sail away when the whole world is passing by right in front of you? Why leave Öresund’s never-ending summer? Life is what happens when you’re not busy making other plans, to misquote John Lennon.
Walking round the island doesn’t take very long. From the bridge on the eastern side one can walk on the breakwater to the harbour mouth. You can jump into the sea from the bridge, and we do. The water is crystal-clear and there’s not the merest ripple against the breakwater. We’re swimming through a channel around an island in the middle of the Öresund strait.
“Last swim of the year,” we smile for the umpteenth time this summer, not believing our own words. We no longer listen to the weather forecasters or wonder what the weather will be like tomorrow: we know. The thought of cheap charters to the Med makes us laugh. Summer is here at home − today, tomorrow, forever. Amen.
We make an effort to do nothing, sitting and watching and remembering Lennon’s lyrics in “Watching the Wheels”: “I’m just sitting here doing time. I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and I really love to watch them roll. No longer on the merry-go-round. I just had to let it go.”
But doing nothing isn’t easy and we nip off to bathe in the sea and work off some energy. Boats sail serenely past and the Öresund Bridge shimmers mirage-like in the distance. I’m looking down the barrel of summer and know that I can’t get any more of it than this. I’m in the middle of it all, of an infinite blue. In the middle of Öresund.
“Somewhere it’s about searching for a feeling of homeliness. If I can find moments of happiness here at home, I can be at home everywhere,” I write in my notebook. “Happiness,” writes Beckett in his, “is to get as close as possible.”