Keep Your Head Above Water

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I keep thinking this is it. I do my sad little wave, a quick bow. Goodbye, au revoir. Then I turn in my flip-flops and start my brief walk home.

    
Of course the following day I return to the water’s edge. Since autumn has arrived it happens less, but this game isn’t over. I refuse to leave the sea alone; I refuse to commit to King Alfred’s chlorine depths: the stinky changing rooms; kids’ hair in the plughole. There it's all straight blue lines, rubber-capped old ladies and the flailing arms of front crawlers. There I'm a machine cutting up water, a chugging mechanism, hidden behind goggles and cap. Nameless, sexless, meant for movement and breath, there I am the number of seconds it takes for me to touch the concrete ledge of the deep end. I disappear, no longer weighed down by the burden of being somebody. It's for this reason that I tolerate that ugly pool. 

     
Seawater magnetises, hypnotises, pulling me in to where it’s deep and slightly treacherous. Buoyant and serene, it calms my thumping heart and floats me home. Often it’s hard work (the dragging current, those endless bloody waves) but the reward is in the crashing orgasmic flood of the senses. The serotonin kick. 

     
I like swimming far out. But these days I listen to friends who say For fuck’s sake, Clare, be careful.  I chit chat with lifeguards. Check wind speeds on the Web. Never go in if waves break violently on the shingle. This summer I even surrendered my solitude and swam with others - we sped past buoys, circled the West Pier and sank back onto hard pebbles, thighs trembling.

     
The sea has a character and a culture of its own, a world apart from the hectic town I live in. This town doesn’t feel like mine, but down here is – amidst this silent, sturdy society of swimmers, surfers and fishermen. The sea’s an addiction, I know; I'm aware of the risks I run for the high I experience, for that joy peculiar only to open water – the vast expanse, the arctic chill on the toes, sun on face, an unhindered smile. I wonder who, or what, I'd be without it, what shape my life would take. No coincidence, of course, that I started sea-swimming when mum had her last stroke, the one that finally silenced her, that condemned her to unseeable depths somewhere between sky and land. Back then, swimming far out I escaped the world, escaped people, the tick tock of life; I entered her world for a while - fluid, formless and all that quiet. 

     
Sun's out. Sitting here writing I keep one ear out for the waves, and my nostrils still sniff seaweed. This could be the day. Last week the buoys disappeared – no markers now, no edges to swim out to. No yellow globe, slimy with seaweed. Just a cold abyss, a charcoal smudge beneath a cloudy skyline.
     
But I wade into a new experience every day; keep my head above water. Chance it one more time. Before friendly waves turn frosty. Before the last farewell of the season. 

Sea-Swimming

I spent that summer dragging my blue and white dinghy to the seafront, eating hot pizza from the diner, rubbing salt into my skin. It had become almost a minor celebrity amongst my friends. We’d hold beach parties where the dinghy was wrenched across pebbles as guest of honour. We went racing up the Adur and huddled on Hove beach in the breezy evenings, comparing seafaring stories and drinking beer.

     
Out on the waves, I’d watch Brighton dissolve into a spray of blinking lights, sunshine bouncing off Sussex Heights. The Palace Pier became a blue and white haze, tiny cable cars rotating in a blue sky. Inside, however, I felt more like the West Pier crumbling slowly into the sea, inhabited only by starlings, cockles climbing over my limbs. I’d sail as far out as I could go until it was silent, a yellow buoy slippery under my hand. I rowed to forget myself, to forget what lay back at the shore. The last thing I wanted to remember was what was happening to Mum.

      
One afternoon, I went out in the dinghy with a friend. It was a clear spring day; the hottest April we’d known in Britain for years. He took control of the oars as I sank back against black rubber, warming my face in the sun. We sailed out, the only people in the water. Soon we were going round in circles. The oars flapped like broken wings, the tide suddenly against us. After ten minutes of spinning, panic, he eventually regained control and we slunk back towards the shore, shaken and stupid. However, in the distance, a lifeboat was already sailing towards us, a noisy helicopter circling overhead.

     
These were clumsy days. I grabbed life where I could, and fell through its cracks again and again. Thirty-three and sailing about in dinghies. Almost thirty-four and finally learning how to ride a bicycle again. I flew over the handlebars on the cycle path along Hove Lawns one bright September morning, trapped under a tangle of metal; saved by three old ladies with purple rinses. In some people’s eyes, I was practically middle-aged. But I felt like a toddler with a cut knee, wailing for my mother.

      
My vision of life felt crooked, bent out of shape. A part of me couldn't see the point when all it came to in the end was one plastic tube, a ventilating machine and your own flesh and blood too terrified to look you in the eye. So instead, I swam.

     
There was nothing more to be done for Mum to try and make her better, no more hoping, no more reassuring words. And the gruelling years of listening to her say, "If only I could just get up and walk to the television set; if I could just drive to the Post Office; if I could just make myself a sandwich; if I could just have your father back home again" were over.

     
The wheelchair stood empty in the back of her bathroom. The hoist now hung limp above her bed. She was far away now in another bedroom, attached to drips and machines, staring out of a window at robins that hopped about the bird-table and pansies sprouting up from the ground. Which was the bird, and which, the flower, I could never be certain she knew.

      
Her words had left her to a silent fate, a whiteness of language, the two sides of her brain in eerie silence. She couldn’t ask for anything she wanted. Maybe I hoped that finally the ghosts had left her.

     
I do believe that at times during that summer, Hove seafront saved me. Whether crashing bicycles or adrift at sea, lifeboat men booming laughter in my direction; down there, I was in the midst of life, in the belly of colour, light, sound. Some nights cycling home, I’d hear nothing but my own wheels on the tarmac, the sea stretching out before me like a beaten sheet of metal, the moon, luminous, wandering.

      
The ideals of my twenties left me crashing and burning in my thirties. I’d become so tired of the endless bullshit, the friends who sharpened their knives, the disappointing lovers. How many men would pass through my eyes before they’d finally grow dark and tired, before I could no longer see, before the mechanisms of sex ground to a halt somewhere between my vulva and my upper ribcage? Before all that I wanted became too much, too impossible, dreaming even higher, craving even more until I was nauseous, an excess of life in the bloodstream, mainlining experience, unable to deal with its consequences?

     
I didn’t realise it then, but those long summer months of survival down at the beach, flitting from England to Wales and back again, were the preparation for a major change in my life. My ideals had swum away, no religion was going to prevent me from being alone and no lover either. The only thing that closed the gap inside of me was writing. It was then that I understood the world again; it presented itself in colours. I staked my game on it; I put in all my chips. And it was worth it, for those brief seconds when the sky was luminous again and I was permitted to walk on the inside of language. I saw my mother lying before me on her white, sheeted bed, and putting pen to paper, I could articulate my love for her more clearly than ever. Those moments, I was content. The rest was just a ticking clock.

The Dinghy

One of these mornings, you're going to rise up singing.

You'll spread your wings and take to the sky.Until that morning, nothing's going to harm youwith your daddy and mommy standing by...

It's eleven o'clock and my chest's tight with a series of toxins. My body is trying to rid itself of a virus that's creeping unseen through my lungs, throat, lower belly and back. I am fighting off invasion from armies that are marching up my bones.

     
It is half-way through the weekend and I'm less mournful than I could be. I'm more a balloon, floating far South on the breeze, catching sight of the needle as it pushes through my rubber. I'm sinking slowly with the sun.

      
And summer is a ghost doing its rounds. I pride myself on my skin's paleness and wear eyeliner to enhance my tiredness. Vampiric, I cower behind car fenders whenever clouds threaten to leave the sun uncovered. I pray for rainy days. I watch myself and others tripping over, time and again, wearing clown's shoes - floppy and ludicrous. And I remember the dull ache of when I got it somehow right, and began to walk properly. When ecstasy left.

     
Where're the dinghy days, I wonder? Days when I was salty with sun and sadness and I pulled my flaccid boat to the beach, just to keep myself from sinking. When the sea was a home, a bed to lie in, a friend, a screaming companion in blue and green; a rage of sunlight, seaweed tangling my toes. It made the memories of Mum swim somewhere further out, somewhere deeper I didn't have to go. Out in the waves, alone, flapping my arms like a seagull, I gave into the sky and floated.       

That was the year when I couldn't take in what was happening to her. The year that the sea-front kept me alive. How strange then, that this year I say: keep me out of the light, keep me in a mossy cavern where I can hear the trickling water. Where I can just lie, and listen.

Back into the world

I've just cycled home from town. It's the first time in a long time that I've cycled home at night along the seafront. Being there felt like I'd left the television on low-volume for weeks, and finally just realised and switched it off. The fuzzy static in my head stopped - it was just my humming wheels, the breaking waves and the night all around me.

I put Kurt Wagner on my headphones. His voice felt like warm fingers stroking my tired brain. That particular Lambchop song reminds me of driving around in circles in Boston at three in the morning, my eyes dry and wide, high on sleeplessness and adventure. A white house appeared through the trees - unknown, hallucinatory. Life was very much like that drive to Boston back then - exciting and painful, turning corners that were never quite the right one.

I've missed cycling like this. The seafront used to be my constant companion, back in the days when I had things like free time. Passing one of the shelters looking onto the beach I spotted a life-size, stuffed penguin, just sitting there - part-comforting, part-menacing. As I stopped to take its photo, it sat there sizing me up, its beak high, fake furriness protruding from every seam.

I'm on a mission to not lose the sparkle that Andalucia gave me - the shine I felt on the inside, just walking through its streets and sleeping in its beds. So I'm currently putting certain things 'into motion' with my life, trying to keep the aliveness alive. It's no surprise to find myself back on my bike, then, and back in the silence that's Hove seafront at night.

I had numerous great ideas and snippets of posts to write about my holiday, but they all passed through and away before my fingers had even hit the keyboard. Maybe they'll come back and I can write them. It was such a good time, and the memories would clutch at me if I let them.

Monday

There are days that begin with a strange hue, that open their curtains to a light never seen before. Today began in smoky greys that crept under my eyelids like ghosts from the sea. I'd been dreaming about a ship off the coast of Morocco. I was staying on it, taking breaks from it to visit this little village on the Moroccan coast. It was always tricky getting back out to the ship, so sometimes I would stay overnight in the village.

However, one time I had to get back to the ship. The only way to do so was to sail out to it by dinghy. This was a risky thing to do. Lots of people did it, but many got lost on the way. I had a friend who had been blown all the way to Nigeria by harsh wind currents. The golden rule was this – no matter what, you had to reach the ship before nightfall, else you would be adrift without any sense of direction, heading out into the empty ocean.

It was a strange dream, full of unhelpful people and cool characters. I undertook the journey back to the ship with a friend of mine. She turned out to be rather immature and annoying, and insisted in stopping off for food in this town we had come across, even though time was precious and night wasn’t far away. I began panicking. As we left the café, I saw that our dinghy had been stolen. My friend and I walked up this road in search of a boat to borrow. As we did so, a Christian woman preaching the word of God came up to me. I waved her away, pre-occupied as I was by my dilemma. I didn't need her preaching; I didn’t need her agenda. My friend however, stopped and gave her a broken string of beads. She smiled.

Halfway up the road, I collapsed in despair, knowing we'd never get to the ship before nightfall. As I slumped against a wall, the woman caught up with us, a man joining her. They were talking about God. His legs were crippled. He said, to no one in particular "People ask how God could do such a thing as to make me lame. But look at these legs of mine - they are simply just different from yours. They have their own shape. They have their own beauty. I am grateful for legs like these."

As I felt myself waking up, I decided to stay in that village for the night, and set off for the ship again in the morning.

So this smoky morning is filled with that dream, and my own sadness. On a daily basis I convince myself that I am over things, I am on top of these losses that drift in and out of my life. But they weave their own spell; they inhabit my dreams, and are there when I wake up.

I think about Mum, weaving in and out of her own dreams. It is a peculiar kind of loss, I think, to mourn those still alive. But every loss has its own sad flavour and each bleeds into the other. I am missing my friend, David, and his death has its own mystery and shock. I am also missing what I could have had, had my life been different and I'd made different choices. I don't regret, but I do mourn.

Today isn't a heavy, foreboding kind of grey. It is light and wispy as a mouse’s fur. It fills the streets outside and the air in the sky over Brighton. It curls around the pier like a tail and disperses with the seagulls taking flight. I breathe it in and swallow, feel it welling up in my eyes. I realise that my heart is a slate, and I write my longings on it with a soft piece of chalk. I don't know how to say goodbye. If I could write that; that is what I would say.

I've got a new teapot, a lovely green and glassy Christmas present. It is sitting on my table under the window and, magically, looks like it has always been there. I have a not-so-secret belief that tea cures everything. So I dry my eyes and put the kettle on, warm the pot. This magic ritual is a supreme comfort; it is an act of love. I don't want to open my doors to anyone today. I want to hide with my teapot and my chalky heart until day passes into night. But life isn't made like that. Things press on. I must open my curtains and move.

The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side of The Moon ..

We made a routine out of sitting by that cliff edge. We nipped back and forth from our tent as though the cliff, the seamless sky and the sea below it were simply the corner shop or the loo.

I lay back and looked. He was constantly naming stars and constellations, happiest to sit and gaze up. I was constantly discovering all the things I still feel I need to do in my life, things that I probably never will, but somewhere still hold a light to, hoping that one day ... when I'm rich, when my life is different, when I've completed the training, when I'm older and more settled, when I win 35 million on the Lottery.

And we would scuttle back to the tent and sleep or wake or giggle, and then we would be back there again, lying back, gazing upwards, him naming constellations, me discovering yet more things that I still want to do in my life and possibly never will. The list became endless ...

I must go up in a space shuttle and orbit the Earth. I have to fly to the Moon. I want to go to Mars as well. I want to be a rockclimber. A mountaineer. Go paragliding. Own and fly my own bi plane. Do formation dancing whilst strapped to its wing. I've got to climb Everest before I die. I will one day go to Antarctica. Can I live without having stood at least once amongst penguins and ice? I must understand all religions. I want to be wealthy. I must become Enlightened. I want to know Christ; journey to France to live alone with nothing but the clothes on my back. I want to be a mother. I will be a writer. How far off is that journey in a tour bus? What about the record deal? Can I build that home in the desert with my own hands? Will I ever really know what it is like to live as a drunken poet, willing to sacrifice all decency? Where is that great movie script inside me? How can I live to the end of my days without knowing what it's like to be a man? Is there any bird that could bear my weight on its back as it flies across whole continents? Why can't I write a PHD on Quantum Physics? Why do I still think stars are little candles in the sky? Why does my head explode when he tells me that the star I'm looking at isn't a star, but is actually a whole galaxy which itself contains millions upon millions of suns just like our own sun in it, and it is 2.5 million million light years away, with each light year itself being the equivalent of 6 million million miles away?

This cliff edge is strong. It's pulling me out towards the fulmars and the black-backs. Then it's taking me further, out into the inky mass of blackened planets, to where my craving meets my soul and both explode in starlight. These dreams are not the work of idle moments. They live in me like a constant heart beat; most of them since I was a child. Back in those days, so much was fantasy, an unattainable goal. These days it is not always easy to know what is far fetched and what's real. The moon landing or the record deal. The bi plane or the novel. The Big Bang or the Holy Spirit. However, craving, and the vision it brings does not usually possess me as much as it has on this cliff top; on this strange and beautiful cliff of longing.

I look at him. He has some secret I cannot yet discover. He simply watches and looks, his nose edging upwards towards the wings that pass above him. If I could be so content. If I could sit and remember it is all here now - the moon, the stars, the space shuttles and the backs of birds. My dreams are always of travelling, of flying, of taking off, or else they are of being struck down, struck by a lightning bolt that illluminates everything. Do I dream of angels? Yes, sometimes; as much as I dream of dirty bars. Is it here, now? Of course it is.

I like it here. There are no signs of a normal life lived here in these parts. We are happy. Him and me. At the edge. Both of us dreaming, in our own ways.

Wednesday

I cycled into town today, mist billowing towards me. I have had a complicated relationship with my bicycle, Jeopardy. It has been fraught, to say the least. I am feeling now, however, that we are finally beginning to understand each other, rather than simply tolerating each other, or at worst, forming what can only be described as a dysfunctional bond, based on mutual dislike and mistrust. I have to admit, I haven't been very caring towards her.

These foggy days, I love them even more than those ones which are pumped with sunshine and crisp blue skies. Today, the sea looked like snow. The West Pier was even more spectral than usual, rising up out of the frosty waves like a black demon. On days like this, it is possible for me to believe that I could be living in any age, the world stilled into a black and white photograph, all modernity vanished.

On days like this, it makes me cry to think about leaving Brighton.

Long Afloat on Shipless Oceans...

Bob has come up with a new nickname for me. It's not the prettiest, but it has a certain ring to it if you say my name in full. Cotad. In fact, that should really read C.O.T.A.D. It stands for Completely Oblivious To All Danger. Yes, that's me.

It was a glorious, sunny, blue-skied day on Monday when my friend L and I tramped our way to the inflatables shop on Hove sea-front to get my forlorn and pumpless dinghy blown up. There was a light breeze, but the sun was hot and the sea looked like it was begging us to dip our toes in.

This was the first outing of Her Ladyship since my failed attempt last week with G due to torn pump rubber and inadequate gaffer tape. As the owner dragged the now fully inflated dinghy from his shop, he creased his ruddy face and asked "Are you sure you'll be alright going out in these conditions? There's a strong wind out there today."

"Nah, no problem" we both replied.

As we excitedly dragged my great blue and yellow wonder away from the beach balls and plastic windmills, his wife reiterated "You sure you'll be ok?"

Blimey, I thought, these sea-front people can be so over cautious.

Rather than leave our stuff on the beach, we decided to bring it with us. We piled it all into one huge plastic bag, and, somewhat stylishly and effortlessly, manoeuvred both ourselves and the bag into the dinghy and set off from the shore.

I love leaving Brighton behind. My favourite thing about going out in the dinghy is that I can watch the shoreline shrinking, the noise and the hassle of the city slowly drifting away. Brighton and Hove look so beautiful from out there. They stand wrapped in silence, with only the sound of lapping waves, or a gull overhead to interrupt the feeling of endless emptiness and space. In the sunshine, the city looks like it's made of gold.

I relaxed while L rowed. I had only recently found out that he is as much of a dinghy fanatic as myself, and, the experience of finding this out had been not unlike discovering that your friend is a member of the same secret, subversive society as you. We discussed our passion for the inflatable vessel over pear cider last week, agreeing how it is so much more than a crap blown-up toy which people muck about in when they go on holiday. No, it is much more spiritual than that, much more mysterious, esoteric and radical. I have long known that there are those who understand the full implications of The Way Of The Dinghy, and those who dismiss it as merely childish, silly or uncool. Such lost souls, one can only feel sorry for.

Anyway, it got a bit nippy, but thanks to the vast array of clothes we had packed into the boat, I wrapped up in a jumper. L started to look somewhat puzzled. Even though we hadn't actually tried to row further out to sea, we seemed to suddenly be rather far out, and since there were no yellow buoys out to give us any perspective, it was hard to determine exactly whether it was too far. L was concerned and so began rowing back towards the shore. After ten minutes, his puzzlement had turned to a grimace.

"No matter how much I row, I'm not actually moving anywhere" he uttered, frowning. I thought it was best for me to look concerned as well, so he didn't feel alone in his panic, and didn't notice how much I thought he was overreacting.

"Let me try," I said.

"No" came the prompt, stressed answer. He carried on rowing. At that point I turned to survey the shoreline. We hadn't moved one metre in ten minutes.

I took an oar. We both started rowing, I put my whole body into it. After a few minutes I looked again and slowly the shoreline was looking a little closer, not much, but a little. We carried on, my arms began to ache, and finally we reached a place where it felt comfortable enough to take a breather. Phew.

Our spirits returned in the knowledge that we were out of immediate danger. L suggested that I turn around so that we were both facing the same way, so that we could put more power into it. Now, turning round in a dinghy isn't the easiest of tasks, and I had just clumsily managed the maneouver and grabbed the oar when I spotted a boat heading towards us. I panicked for a moment that it might crash right into us, then, to my relief, and then my horror, I realised that it wasn't a speedboat, but a lifeboat, and it wasn't simply heading in the same direction as us, it was heading for us.

Suddenly, L cried "Run for it!" Looking back on it, this wasn't the cleverest of things to shout in the circumstances, firstly because one can't really 'run for it' in a dinghy, and secondly, if one isn't to take the wording too literally, even then, trying to out-row a large engine powered lifeboat with a small inflatable dinghy, is quite unlikely. Nevertheless, I promptly grabbed the oar and we flailed around attempting to flee the oncoming boat.

"We've had a distress call about a blue and yellow dinghy!" came the loudspeakered voice.

Now, following this announcement, came the second utterance that makes no sense in hindsight, but when faced by potential utter humiliation and embarrassment, one is driven to say somewhat stupid things.

I shouted back "Oh, that's not us, I think it's that dinghy over there", as I pointed to a speck on the horizon which I didn't even know what kind of sailing vessel it was. "We're fine!" I proclaimed as a helicopter flew overhead, and stopped precisely above us, hovering like an annoying fly.

"No, it is you" came the quick reply as the helicopter continued to buzz above us. L muttered expletives under his breath.

"No, we're really fine" he echoed, "we're just making our way back to shore now".

"We'll tow you back" came the loudspeaker.

We looked at each other. No fucking way. We'd both rather drown trying than have the humiliation of dangling off the back of the RNLI all the way back to shore. We waved our oars around and tried to look effective and competent. Unfortunately, I had only just swivelled into my new position in the dinghy and hadn't yet got a grasp of how to use the oar from this position. We sped round in circles.

"Are you sure you don't want our help?" came the now sniggering voice.

"No," shouted back L in an attempted air of confidence. "We're very British you know, very proud".

They stood there watching us, tailing every slow and self-conscious stroke of our pained journey back to shore, the sound of our rowing echoed by their laughter. At least the sodding rescue helicopter cleared off.

Finally, we arrived, wobbly handed at the beach, managed to get ourselves and our belongings out of the dinghy and up on shore.

"Bet they're still laughing at us" L said with a scowl as we waved at them and they finally sped off.

We laid out the blanket. The sheer humiliation of the experience was potent fuel for laughter. We cracked up. Suddenly, I spotted two coastguards approaching us. "Are you the owners of this blue and yellow dinghy?" one of them asked. Here we go again, I thought.

They were very nice about it all, considering. Again, don't ask me why, but I tried to convince them that there must have been a mistake.

"There was another dinghy out there" I told one of them. "I think maybe it was that that was in trouble."

"No," he responded " that was a man in a kayak who was actually on his way out to you both to see if you needed assistance. We received three alerts about you from members of the public."

Shit. We apologised profusely for the fuss we had caused.

"I'll have to take down your names and addresses."

I imagined myself on some Dinghy black-list.

"It's for our records only. Any further out, and you two'd not have made it back".

So there we have it. COTAD. Completely Oblivious To All Danger. I still couldn't really accept that maybe we had lost a bit of control of the dinghy out there until I told a friend the story the other night. Whilst giggling at the hilariousness of it all, I looked back at her, and noticed that she wasn't smiling.

"I might never have seen you and L again," she cried, "I'd have turned up for Writers' Group and someone would say 'Oh, they're not coming. They drowned in Clare's inflatable dinghy yesterday."

I guess that's the thing with the sea. Like life, you never can quite tell which way the currents are pulling. They look like they're going one way, and then suddenly you realise they're going in quite another. It's all a question of navigation, strong arms and not letting yourself get carried out too far.

When the coastguards had finally left, the sun was getting so hot I could feel my face burning. I lay in a semi-sleepy state, basking in the rays. "We'll probably find ourselves on the Government's terrorist suspect list now" L surmised as he got out his crayons and pad.

"Yeah," I agreed. "CID will be tapping our phones". I wondered what the time was, as I had lost complete track of it in all the drama. I sat up.

"Are you drawing the sea?" I asked him.

I leaned over his pad. And there she was, in blue and yellow. My Rapid 4000 who had got us home. The best dinghy in the world.

Next to the Angel Peace Statue at the point where Brighton turns into Hove, there was a huge crane towering over the seafront, looming tall next to Embassy Court. I wondered what it was for, with a metal grill box hanging from it, and I could just about make out the outline of two men. Suddenly a figure of a man jumped from the box and was dangling before my eyes attached by a white rope around his ankle.

I stood and watched as he was lowered back down and another man took his place in the metal grill box, and was lifted back high in the air.

Today the sea front is so alive with such sights, I feel almost airborne. Huge swathes of starlings line every inch of the West Pier, and seagulls float above me, immobile in the wind. Black silhouettes of men in wetsuits bob up and down in the waves around the West Pier, and occasionally, one struggles to his feet on a board momentarily before being swept under the foam and waves once again. In the distance, seven kites curve in the air, dragging more men and perhaps women above and across the surface of the choppy sea.

Even the clouds seem buoyant and adrift, turned orange by the fading sunlight, which casts a sheen over the sea like copper, which mixes with the turquoise of the five o clock sky and makes the rain on the pavement shine.

It feels good to take steps in such a swirl of brightness, like a lifting bird who does not mind if her feathers are ruffled or if it looks like there might be a storm over Shoreham harbour tonight.

Light, light, light. I pass the lawns I have passed so many times, the toes of my shoes turning darker with the wet from underfoot. I have a wind in my soul, clearing through cobwebs and the blackest dust, loosening the stiffened grey cogs of my machinery so that I can move again. I am surfing this moment, my hair, aflap with gulls and a single aeroplane trail. Air is billowing my dress and senses, the wind is sailing me home.

Sunday Best

Well, the afternoon Tea Party went down a storm on Sunday, with cakes, Assam and ginger cake galore. It was a magnificent afternoon, the weather holding out, and the sun daring to shine. We all wore our Sunday best and I even put on a bit of Edith Piaf and Django Reinhardt to add to the atmosphere. An eccentric affair, the kind that always bring the biggest smile to my lips. More afternoons should be spent like this - there is something poignantly beautiful about such a spread on the beach, with all your friends, watching as the sun sinks behind the horizon and Summer ebbs its way from the tides of the shore.

I finally have some more time off, so today I am working on a song at my keyboard. Oh, the joy of solitude.

The Leaves Are Starting To Fall..

Autumn is coming. Walking up Ditching Road this morning, I felt it in the breeze, saw it in the cracked orange leaves that circled round my knees and bag.

This morning I am a girl of the sea. Sweet and strong with a head full of wonder, an eye for light: I sparkle on water. Tomorrow I may be Andalucia, with a body of blood like aged red wine from the cellar, a heart of ardent rapture, sitting by a ring of sand, watching the bull toss his head with bleeding pride.

Yesterday was a bad day. Today, so far, my heart is alive and breathing once again, remembering it can take care of itself, and that, in the midst of pain, there is still love, if you can persist to find it. This can take some looking.

But as there is a season about to end, there is another beginning. I will make it a new beginning. And to mark it, this Sunday I hold A Tea Party on the beach, with fancy frocks and friends to say goodbye to what has, in many ways, been a memorable and beautiful season.

And I am not quite ready for snow, but the thought of chocolate coloured days and walks by the green cooling river fill me with a new joys. Trips to London to see the new Rodin collection, Tate Modern, my sister and the Thames. Kittywakes calling from Seaford cliffs, quiet afternoons writing, berries and hot tea late at night.

And the beach will change its flavour, but will still be there, chugging and churning, my solace in this greedy busy town, peace in the burning car headlights.

Who knows what will actually become of this Autumn, but perhaps I don't have to opt for complete hibernation just yet, or can do so in another way. I think they call it Recuperation. I call on all my animals of the forest, of the ice, of the road. Let them take care of this little soul when it grows littler, when the rocks start falling and I need a place to hide, some fur and strong paws to bury my face in.

And all being well, it won't break my heart to see Mum in the new nursing home where she'll soon be residing, with her child-like vision, the flower pots on the patio. I am so glad there will be flowers for her there. And though it feels a devastation to think we all might be in for another long haul, because we know she will not get better, but could stay in some twilight world for years to come, I am glad she will be settled somewhere where there are no nurses, too busy to give my mother a second glance, to really look after her, where I can leave behind wards, the clinical smell, the dreadful taste of death and withering in my mouth. At least there are hills there.

And I have joined a Writing Circle. And I soon begin a little writing course. And life moves onward. I never stay the same. And even in one day, who I am shifts and changes. I am Clare, and I am reborn with every tear, every pain.

Dinghies Rule.

Well I'm sizzled and sozzled by all this heat and sun, my skin is salty and red and my feet are sore and pummelled from all the walking upon sharp, pebbled beaches I have been doing today. But it's all been worth it for I have bought a dinghy! Well, more correctly, Jo and I are now the proud owners of 'Rapid 4000' (soon to be replaced by a fairer name when we think of one), a blue, white and yellow vision of loveliness and rubber.
     In my last post I talked about certain strange desires that come upon me from time to time. Well, I reckon that dinghies are the new 'answer to everything', and my desire for one today grew to such epic proportions that I could think of nothing else except the vision of Jo and I bobbing up and down like queens in our dinghy palace, gin and tonics in hand, a troop of lithe young men in fetching shorts trailing behind us attached to rubber rings.
     Jo and I braved the crowded stretch of beach between home and the Palace Pier at least three times seeking out the lowest price, (with preferable free pumping upon purchase), and so we were elated when we finally hunted out one that was the best price by far, and they even threw in a pair of oars for free.
     The only problem was getting it (fully inflated) all the way home again after our first outing in the sea. I had initially suggested that I row it all the way from Churchill Square, then around the West Pier, meeting Jo with the bags on the other side. But after it became clear that the only moves I seemed capable of were rotating us 360 degrees repeatedly until Jo had to take over, we decided that carrying it home would be safer. Since Jo's wrists were playing up, I had the joyful task of carrying all 8 feet by 4 feet of dinghy on my head, through the heaving hordes of holidaymakers making their way up the sea front.
     We finally made it to Hove and rewarded ourselves with delicious pizza and chips in Maroccos, before pushing the dinghy out again, by now, into the darkening sea of sunset. I was getting the hang of the oars finally, and we effortlessly sped out into the milky blue water as the shadows of the shoreline faded into the distance, and fireworks exploded silently over the Palace Pier. Brighton looks very different from this far out to sea, we were starting to slide out into silence, where there were only gulls, tinkling fish, and a yellow buoy in the distance. This is where I want to spend my days and nights in this town of mine, this side of the sea front. This is where the inspiration is, where poetry bobs up and down with the plastic under our hands. This is my kind of home. Jo put her head back and looked up at the electric blue sky. Stars were beginning to peep out from behind the clouds. The night was perfect.

After a gentle arrival back into shore, and a bumpy landing on the beach, we wobbled our way back to my flat, dinghy in tow, our legs exhausted from too much swimming, our arms weary from so much rowing, our skin smarting from the salt and the sun. But I, ever the impractical and slightly over sentimental one, decided that I couldn't bear to deflate our lovely new blue girl, and that she would have to be dragged, fully inflated, up to my top floor flat, where she could reside happy and fat in my exceedingly tiny hallway. So drag her I did, up three flights of narrow stairs, around squeaky corners and finally into my nine-foot hallway did we push in all eight-foot of her blue magnificence.
     Sitting here now I think, well, if I'm not to have a boyfriend at the moment, then I shall have a dog instead. But if I'm not to have a dog at the moment (I've got to think a way around the landlord), well, a dinghy it has to be. She's a lot less complicated than a man, and though she does take up more room, you can deflate her and fit her nicely in a little plastic carry all, and pump her up again when you need her. She doesn't poo and she doesn't break your heart, you don't have to take her for walks and she won't tell you how she just 'needs some space' at the moment. So there you have it, all existential problems undone. I now know how my days and nights this summer will be spent. Dinghys rule.