But even when loyalties are divided, most of us will concede that there is something about water that soothes. It is often referred to as the elixir of life, covering 70 percent of the earth and making up nearly 70 percent of our bodies.

The reason for this near-universal love of water is hard to pin down. It might be that we all develop in the watery realms of our mother’s wombs and so our earliest sounds must be reminiscent of the water. Maybe it is that the rhythms of the seas mimic our own, with the moon’s rhythm exerting its gentle influence on the push and pull of the tides in a 28-day cycle, which - uncannily or not- is the same as a woman’s menstrual cycle.

Perhaps its a more visual affinity; the fact that a watery landscape is ever-changing, a constant dance between sea and sky, one moment a vivid blue, the next a stormy grey and so often a canvas for the delight of dancing sunlight, or ‘sun glitter’, as it is rather magically called.