Signpost

It went that way:

https://construed.home.blog

Dispossessed, disburdened

 

Boxed

Boxed.  Period.

Best beach

turned on a beautiful penultimate day for us.

Drinking Saint-Emilion from a nutella jar

Yesterday’s transport was well fouled-up, worse for many others than for me, and perhaps it would be insensitive to talk about a Black Hole on wheels. Still, enforced intimacy with the other wedged standees made occasion for the kindness of women, hot news from the Hong Kong riots mingling with sisterly or motherly encouragement for the youngest, late for her interview.  Hope she got it.

Falling feverishly out of the train, I encountered more womanly kindness:  the church ladies supplying home made scones and tea, jokes, and advice to take five minutes quiet upstairs.  It was good advice too, and I wish I could have fitted the whole ceiling into the shot.

The rain held off, the cathedral filled up, the parents did their thing, and one of the nearests-and-dearests shared Emma with me by earbud to mask the announcer, but she left me in the lurch just before the Chancellor’s speech, when I needed Austen the most.  The Chancellor read a “poem” – a long poem – what he had wrote.  It was … bad.  Other excesses of the day included scarlet cloth and purple squiggles (jacquard? brocade? I never know) and a pink tie.  And a bonnet.

Today:  a forced march in the damp morning to look at a teeny place face-lifted by the upwardly mobile.  Is it Destiny or a dud?  I have opened a bottle, but so much progress has been made in the kitchen that for a moment I thought it would have to be drunk from a chipped mug or a marmalade jar.

There’s rather a lot for one.

Exposed to ridicule

It has been a dismal day; doing something silly was the most readily available anodyne.  Luckily a stash of disposable overalls has, for reasons far too complicated to recount, been lurking in the back of a wardrobe for years.

My lack of skill in figurative art came out again in a horrible parody of that lovely weed, the germander speedwell.

But anyway I peacefully devoted half an hour to making myself ridiculous.

End of the line

Sad on the bus to see an elderly man talking quietly but angrily to himself all the way, while the beautiful downs flowed by on the right and the beautiful beautiful sea passed on the left.

After eating a final archetypal cheese scone (though like all archetypes, they are not quite what they were) it was time to wander past the respectable houses and then the edge of the marshes, glimpsing towards the chalk.

The bay was draughty rather than stormy; even so the spray was flying from the prom, and the lucid (and literal) aquamarine turned ominous as soon as the sun left it.

A lifeboat station shop yielded second-hand books (a rash purchase at this moment) and a sugar fix.  On the bus, the downs flowed on the left and the sea passed on the right.

 

Surprise

at the bottom of a dirty bucket.

Formed in dried glaze …

Where have I been?

I’ve been in the attic

and as a consequence, sentimental.

I’ve been lamenting the ruined glory of Brighton station,

the seedy general neglect,

the dismal attempt at beach art,

and been admiring the nearest thing to it – the wind farm.

I have been cheered up by a micro-meadow …

… been exhausted on trains rammed with footie fans, and I’ve been totally and heartfully grateful to see journey’s end.

I’ve been greedy.

I’ve been deliberately placing myself in the way of temptation

and of course I fell (Kathryn Markup for those who want to know)

and I’ve been sitting in the shade.

Watching with my eyes closed

It has been a day full of recalcitrances, various:  rusted-in bolts;  institutional forms that nothing human could complete without error; the Great Document Hunt of 2019; the sheer physical resistance of damp grass.

So yes; the advantage of a familiar film – knowing what the pops, whoops, scratching noises, clicks, and occasional explosions mean without having to actually look.  I took to the recliner and duly reclined.