Serene

The last day of October was perfect although I wasn't free to enjoy it until late afternoon when I made a quick dash for the coast.  The sun was becoming obscured by cloud but the water showed barely a ruffle.
It would have been The Old Man's 95th birthday but he's been gone a year and eight months now, and it's three months since we cast him into the briny on a different part of the British coastline but maybe there's a homeopathic amount of him here.
He would have loved this balmy day although the season into which he was born saddened him with its loss of light and leaves, songless birds and the prospect of darker shorter colder days ahead. The signs of spring, from snowdrop buds to swallows' swoop, on the other hand, thrilled him. Although it's a good few years since he and I went walking together I miss those occasions because no one else in the family is attuned to the natural world in the way we both were. He knew more about birds, I about fungi, and we were more or less evenly matched on plants so every outing involved an  exchange of observations on what we noticed and a mutual delight in the discoveries we shared.
Today there was a single seal on the shingle below the cliffs and a couple of cormorants on the rock stack. A few flowers are still blooming - red campion, ragwort and even a dilapidated foxglove. I'll carry on enjoying them all while I can, for him and for me.