Jane Metcalfe

There is something about the sea. Love it, hate it, indifferent to it, like breath is to our body, the sea is to earth: sea and breath, both changing with the moods and movements of their more solid hosts. And without them, both systems would perish. 

Today the sea’s surface is like a sheath of cellophane with a slightly crumpled texture. A family of 3 stand on the pebbles near the edge watching a hard core swimmer quite a way out, his bubble-pack of clothes bobbing playfully behind him. 

Goat Ledge Cafe has a tropical scene on its back wall for a jolly holiday ambience. A potted plant that’s lost its lustre snuggles up to the painting like it’s trying to grab a little glamour from the superior palm tree with its swanky shadow and bright blue sea. 

I go along Bottle Alley as I generally do in favour of walking on street level. I admit a fondness for it, faded as it is, despite its recent facelift. I like peeking between the gaps in the cement support columns. You never know what you might see! No sweet scent of weed today, just a man gazing out to sea with a dreamy look on his face. I automatically warm to him just because he is captivated, or seems to be, by the view. I steal a photo as I pass and scurry on in case he senses me behind him.

Further on and the benches in one of the half rotundas, usually occupied by a loud trio of drinkers, are empty. Imagine sitting there gazing and gazing! Dreams invite vision without which all would be lost. “To see a world in a grain of sand..” Blake knew the value of vision. 

The sight of this empty bench looking out to sea gladdens me! I seat my dreams on it. ( with apologies to Yeats!)

I glance back. The man on the wall dreams on..

Now is the best time of today. It’s calm out there after sniping winds earlier. 

I had, by the standard of these times, a busy day. My walk was a quick march to the park via Gensing Rd, past The Nags Head, which strangely I’ve never frequented in all my 35 years here. I’m not a natural pub goer unless there’s a reason. Back in my performing days it was next stop after curtain down to let off a bit of steam with a pint of lager. Now I enjoy a glass of wine by my own fire and, in pre Lockdown days, maybe a trip across the road to the Kino Teatr to sink into a faded leather sofa with a large pinot grigio and a good friend for company.

All is mellow. There’s a lone seagull doing sentry duty on the roof to the right of my view; a building that always reminds me of an Edward Hopper painting with eyeless windows hiding uneventful lives. The gull hobbles to the edge of the parapet and looks down as though considering suicide. I swear he’s posing for me against a backdrop of brushed faded ink. When I look up again he’s gone.

Now it is just me by the fire, the last of the logs gurgling in the grate like a contented baby.

My walk was a shaken kaleidoscope of images. I still had time to take in the carefully arranged necklace of pebbles and stones on a windowsill and next door twin plants like stolid old men, plumped down on a garden bench. 

Along the railings of the park clumps of tall luminous golden dandelions. The distinction between flowers and weeds is very tenuous. There are no boundaries to beauty when we look with our soul.

It’s been a quiet day today. I felt it in the air, as though everyone were taking stock. Maybe we are all tired of the game; of chatting to people we love via one of the many techno-gizmos on offer. 

I suddenly remembered as a small child my deep fear of the large black object that stood on a table in the hall. Sometimes it shook the house with its insistent brrr brrr, like the caw of a crow. I was a sensitive child. I trembled at images of black-winged creatures pecking in a nearby field. Not much later, when I was perhaps 8, my mother offered me a penny if I’d answer the phone. But even the promise of payment was not seductive enough to win me over. 

Looking back I think it was the confusing idea of a disembodied voice coming through a machine. It terrified me. People, real people, face to face; flesh and blood, skin, smell – the live frequency of another, means so much more than an undressed voice or a flat image on a screen. You want to stretch out your hands and touch…

Only you can’t.

It’s not allowed.

It isn’t terminal of course. We’re just waiting in the hallway for the flight to land, for the doors to open and the hugging to begin again…

And it will. It will…

In the meantime small, natural sights that are linked to one another without effort or censorship gladden the heart: the little yellow stars nestling under the road name, the ghostly little dog at the window; the blatant green of the ferns pushing their way through thick park railings.. and the view through my split-trunked sycamore.

We are still embraced!

I live with a direct, in your face view of the sea. It’s a moody old thing. Whenever I glance out of the window it is staring in as if it has a tale to tell, but it won’t speak up; it wants me to guess what’s going on, not just on the surface but deep down. Like I care, I project back. Don’t we all take each other at face value? A sea of humans with stories to tell and depths imagined, yet unplunged? 

I walked into town along my familiar route; past Goats Ledge, the locked toilets (I know because I tried them, being caught slightly short),the dour little kids’ climbing frames, constructed by adults who’d forgotten how to play; and into the mouth of Bottle Alley, which, without its night time display of psychedelic lights, never fails to look like an extended entrance to an underground car park. 

Today the sweet/sickly aroma of weed, skunk, grass, dope – whatever you call it – insinuates its way into my nostrils and before I know it I’m seeing lights and colour where before it was just steely grey on grey. I’ve noticed the smell snaking along the seafront more these days. I suppose it is a means of escape, turning off the faucet of reality; relaxing, forgetting. I find myself wanting to see every detail and though a mellow mood steals over me, I am sharp, alert, clear.

This is what “lockdown” has provided: A small window of walks that consume my senses with the extraordinary ordinary.

After most of the previous day without water due to a faulty pipe in the main resevoir, I woke up this morning to sputtering taps clearing their pipes, much the same as I do first thing before my breath flows smoothly. It was raining and I felt that little slump of disappointment in me after weeks of sunny walks. By 10.30 it had turned to drizzle and off I went. I was immediately struck by the plants: sharp and glistening, as thankful to bathe in water as I had been earlier. 

There were very few people out. I went into the park to visit my favourite tree for a spot of tai chi (an unintentional rhyme). Afterwards I was marvelling at the strange vein-like streaks in its trunk. I hadn’t noticed them before. 

Then at the base was a little patch of foam emanating from the point where trunk met earth. I bent down to look and of course took a photo. As I walked down the path a man with an elderly dog, who was dutifully sniffing at a plant, asked why I was taking a photo of the trunk base. I confessed to being curious. He said there was probably some damage and this was the sycamore’s reaction. Sycamore! I hadn’t known! Now my favourite tree had a name! We talked at distance for a while as he waited for his 18 year old dog to finish her foraging. “She doesn’t like to come out” he told me. He spoke wistfully, as though feeling the imminent loss of her and, perhaps too, of his excuse for leaving his 4 walls behind to dwell awhile in this – Nature’s open-plan house.

I love this peek into people when they reveal quite unintentionally a good heart, a passion, a sensitivity that calls to me on a deep level. This is real connection. 

I stopped to look at the drops of rain fanning out between the lily pads on the little lake then on to the seafront and a half tide with 4 cormorants lording it, each on their own reptilian rock. And finally this lone man gazing out to sea.

Rain. Water. Sea. Connections. Where would we be without them?