Same again

… a week later.
Headed through a vortex of rain and was all at sea with pressure falling rapidly, winds becoming cyclonic, visibility very poor and feeling more Mallin Head than M6. I clung on to the ships wheel and turned west in the hope that the forecast was right and aimed for that unseen band of blue in the distance and the sea proper (‘Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency.’ Rebecca Solnit). 

It was still wild when I got there but as soon as I got my kit off and costume on the sun came out and I pitched and tossed in the sea salty surf.

Afterwards, I called on A&H with sunflowers, chocolate and an apology for forgetting his birthday last week. We sat and had a cuppa and a wander around his beautiful garden and I came away with mange tout and a huge spring onion which joined my courgette for my omelette when I got back home.

The Hermit Crab (by Mary Oliver)

Once I looked inside
the darkness 
of a shell folded like a pastry,
and there was a fancy face -

or almost a face -
it turned away
and frisked up its brawny forearms
so quickly

against the light
and my looking in
I scarcely had time to see it,
gleaming

under the pure white roof
of old calcium.
When I sent it down, it hurried
along the tideline

of the sea,
which was slashing along as usual,
shouting and hissing 
toward the future,

turning its back
with every tide on the past,
leaving the shore littered 
every morning

with more ornaments of death -
what a pearly rubble
from which to choose a house
like a white flower -

and what a rebellion
to leap into it
and hold on,
connecting everything,

the past to the future -
which is of course the miracle -
which is the only argument there is
against the sea.