Life’s a beach. Except if you happen to live in Hong Kong in the early months of 2021, where life is a right homophone as the beaches that the government has deigned to register are – courtesy of the Covid-19 kerfuffle – corralled behind miles of tape and plastic fencing and festooned with fatuous proclamations such as “Temporary Closure of Venue”. In short: according to a Leisure and Cultural Services Department communique of February 18, we were permitted to sit in the open air in a public park, but not on a beach that the bumper book of clichés tells us is wafted by ocean breezes. You could pump iron within the confines of an indoor gym, but not stretch your muscles at the seaside. Shelling out several hundred dollars to get into Disneyland got the official thumbs-up: not so strolling on the beach without paying a cent. And some cynics say that’s the bottom line – no money, no honey, no beachy – and the method in the governmental madness. And madness it undoubtedly is. There’s hardly a man or woman in Hong Kong who doesn’t have happy memories of childhood expeditions to the beach, and it’s just the sort of liberating break that kids need now. Likewise seven-year-olds of all ages. And just to rub a bar of salt into the wound, Hong Kong has been basking in weeks of bright sunshine, clear skies and low humidity, which combine to form the ideal weather for heading out to the you-know-where. There is an escape clause: a mere 41 beaches in Hong Kong are officially gazetted, to use the rather quaint colonial term. Of course, they include all the obvious candidates and those that are easiest to get to: Repulse Bay and its neighbours on the south of Hong Kong Island are first in the queue. Other beaches dotted around our shores, and there are dozens of them, fall outside the remit of busybody-dom. They don’t have lifeguards or shark nets, or an eldritch loudspeaker system, but they do have the essential constituents of a beach, such as sand and saltwater. As the government hasn’t closed them, of course they must be completely safe to visit. Getting there requires no more than a pair of boots, a map and an utter detestation of pettifogging regulations. And even if the gazetted beaches open soon – deep breath – THERE WAS NO EARTHLY REASON TO CLOSE THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE!