Friday the last day of my holiday and I wake to sunshine. My partner and I drink warm drinks and then go down to Watsons café for breakfast. Today it is quite busy but the service speedy. Its good to have a hearty breakfast with no washing up to do, it means my partner and I can relax and meander through the meal. There are odd corners of this café and a table with an array of saleable goodies next to the book exchange shelf, its that kind of place.
We pay the bill and take a couple of scones with us. On he way back to our cottage we stop off at the village shop, grandly called a superstore, and gather up some odds and ends to make our departure preparations easier. Its late morning by the time we get back to FLIP the cottage. I set about the quick crossword in the paper and then continue to read Jim Harrison’s The Essential Poems. I am really taken with the richness of his descriptions of his experience of nature. It is nothing like a lot of what I call “hello birds, hello trees” British poetry, this poetry is a natural and as raw as Nature itself, is jam packed and bursting at the seams with nature and it’s inhabitants. I could never write this stuff. Yet over the years as he gets old the poetry becomes more precise and succinct. Its his more “bony” stuff that appeals to me, but then it would given my preference for stark verse.
So I read punctuated by the odd snack or quick chat with my partner, until it is time to walk the beach, or at least the tiny stretch that we can manage. the breeze is sharper today so we walk faster and our half way stop, were we sit on stumps of an old groyne to chat, is also shorter today. Once back we sit and recover in our shared courtyard be to interrupted by the woman who looks after the property. She is on the hunt for who owns the third car parked our back. I explain that the “tortoise” at FLOP have visitors. “Ah that’s okay then” she says and then tells us how people just park and then go to the beach as if it was okay to leave their cars on the drive way. She also tells us about the winter and spring sand storms. Apparently at these times the sea comes right up to the sea wall and sand is blown into all the properties. Not only that it does so with such force that it makes some of the seaside house shake every time the waves hit the wall. we then hear about her medical history and the quality and availability of medical services. It seems that the folk of Bracton cannot afford to be ill, and if they are not to expect any treatment quickly, she is waiting for a place on her heart management course but it will not happen until February next year. As she said, she could be dead by then. After she goes I return to Jim Harrison and read more of this amazing man’s poetry, stopping only briefly to order another book to read.
As the tea is put into cook I start to draft the blog until I have no more to say about my day. I have emailed my “publisher” and asked about a Forward for the anthology, it was a thing that I had thought about in the beach walk. I have no idea who would do it or who to ask but it needs exploring. It comes to the inevitable point where packing has to start and the checks on the car for tomorrows early morning departure, so I start to pack away my clothes and make sure I know where everything is.
The evening is full of Would I Lie to You and more packing and tidying before I take my night meds and get to bed hoping for a good nights sleep before the drive home tomorrow.
