We waited until the sun stopped being mean and then we went to the beach, which is the best place and I will not be taking questions.
The waiting is the worst part. All afternoon the floor by the window was too hot to lie on properly, and Dad kept saying not yet, not yet, it is too hot for your paws. I do not know what my paws have to do with anything. I sat by the door with the lead in my mouth to make my point. He ignored the point. He is very good at ignoring the point.
Getting there is a whole thing too. There is a train with no driver, which I do not trust, and then a walk, and Dad keeps me on the lead the whole way and says wait about forty times. There are smells the entire route and I am allowed to investigate roughly none of them. By the time the sand happens I am completely beside myself, which Dad says is my natural state.
The sand was cool by evening, which is the only time Dad lets me properly run. This is the deal. We come when the sun is going down and the ground has calmed itself, and then the lead comes off and the whole beach becomes mine. I did my big loops with no purpose at all, out towards the water and back, past a family with a picnic, around a bin, out again. A poodle tried to join and could not keep up, and I felt a bit sorry for her and also very fast. I am not a fast dog by the numbers. I am a fast dog by feel.
Dad is very strict about the heat, which I resent in the moment and understand in the abstract. He never lets me run in the middle of the day, he carries water everywhere in a bottle that is apparently mine, and if I start doing the big open-mouth panting he makes me stop and sit in the shade and drink whether I want to or not. I have heard him tell other dog people that this is the one thing everybody gets wrong here, that a Singapore dog and a midday sun are not friends. I pretend not to listen. I listen to everything.
The light did the thing it does at Tanjong where the whole sky goes orange and the water turns the colour of the inside of a papaya. Dad stops walking when this happens and just stands there like a lamp post, so I have to stand there too, which is boring, but I have learned to allow it because he gets quiet and happy and then usually there are more treats afterwards.
I found a stick. It was too big for me and I carried it anyway, because it was mine now, the rules are simple. I paraded it up and down. Another dog looked at it and I made my feelings extremely clear. Dad let me keep it until the gantry, and then he said the stick had to stay behind, which is the great injustice of my life so far. I think about that stick sometimes. It was a good stick and it deserved better.
On the way home I was too tired to be dramatic. The train did its driverless nonsense and I did not even complain, I just leaned on Dad's leg and watched Singapore go past in the dark. That is the other secret about the beach in the evening. You come back emptied out in the good way, salt in your fur, sand in places sand should not be, and you sleep like the sea is still moving under you. Best place. Still not taking questions.