I woke up last Sunday, a mild dose of anxiety making me feel slightly sick – the struggle of lockdown, the crisis in the world and not knowing when it will end. A dip in the sea, that would do the trick. The high tide was going out. The water was murky and turbulent; swimmable but with a definite edge and a lot less peaceful than the flat water we enjoyed at the beginning of the month. Normally, I get changed quickly once I’m on the beach, get in, get [...]
I am sixty at the end of this month. I know lots of people are sixty and some are even older, but it's still ... a bit of a thing. I can’t have a party, which serves me right because I’ve always made a huge fuss about having to have one. I was going to have a few people round the weekend before; I intended to spend the actual day with my family and I’d planned a holiday with a friend just after. A perfect triad of low-key celebration, all [...]
1.The weather. It has to be connected, right? 2. How the front at Brighton smells like the sea. I’ve never noticed that before. On the same note, I cycled past a field of sheep yesterday and I could smell the wool. Maybe fields of sheep always smell of wool and I don’t notice. Either way it’s a plus; 3. Cycling. I’ve not been up to Devil’s Dyke before because there are so many cars. Without cars, it's a great ride; 4. Afterwards, and how none of us know what that [...]
It's wet and windy all over the country and no less so than down here in Brighton. The sea chucks pebbles onto the promenade and the council (presumably) sends a guy down with a digger to push them back onto the beach. The sea chucks them back again in the next storm and out the digger comes again. In some ways it seems like a bit of a waste of resources, especially bearing in mind the forecast. There is a lot of work that is like this: cleaning the house, [...]
One of the things I love about this time of year (aside from having got Christmas and my birthday out the way) is how the evenings get noticeably lighter as do the mornings. What a boring thing to say, I hear you mutter. Obvious, dull, doh. It is, and that’s the thing. I must have found myself in at least five conversations already this year about lighter mornings and longer evenings (none, I hasten to add, started by me). Which leads me to observe that even though we know it’s [...]
