Chilly evening

 It is getting harder to keep up the motivation to go out and get exercise with these frigid days of winter. Yesterday I was all but resigned that my walk was too much effort, especially as the snow began to drift down again, but I gave myself a Good Talking To. I had noticed that sunset and low tide would coincide, so despite gathering clouds I told myself I would regret it if I didn't pop down to the seaside just to see - after all I didn't have to get out of the car did I?

And, as the wise Sandra Brownlee says "you have to begin ... that's all you have to do" and once you've begun things flow from there, though I often forget this and get stuck in "not doing". So I hopped in the car, grateful for the heated steering wheel and seat, and drove the short way down to the seafront, snow hissing on the windscreen, to see what I could find.

There weren't many folk there, but the tide was low and the sun was glowing from behind the snow clouds, shining on the wet sand all the way round the bay to Eastbourne, with Beachy Head and the Downs, dusted with snow, in the distance

Folk were walking along the shoreline, dogs prancing and dancing on the sand

And the De La Warr Pavilion was looking rosy in the evening light.

Well worth the effort of just beginning; beauty to delight, the brisk evening air to refresh and a walk to invigorate and add to my step count for the day.

evening's beauty

Just some pics from a walk down to the seaside this evening.

So lucky

If you go down to the sea today

you'll get jolly cold, but you might find

time

marked

in light

and space

through distance

by happenstance

walking along the littoral

I never tire of this space, it always gives me something

 a pebble, cradled in storm shattered wood

 reflections

  and ripples of light

Beachy Head, always there anchoring the horizon

 dogs frisking on the shoreline

 pale moon

netted by branches as I wend my way home

evening light

Work is just beginning to slow down a little and I am managing to get back to my "normal" hours. I'm also trying (for the umpteenth time) to walk down to the seaside at least every other day as the ceaseless rain is also beginning to slow and there is space in the day for walking. This view is my reward - well worth the effort.

When we moved here, just over three years ago, I couldn't walk down and back (only two miles) without stopping on the way up at least once to ease the pain in my legs and back, and catch my breath. Now I am glad to say there is no need to stop (sometimes) and the hurting is easing. This is not said to evoke sympathy - I've lived with chronic pain for most of my adult life, one way or another, and have no need (or desire) for sympathy - but it is good to know that even my poorly disciplined efforts to improve my fitness are bearing some fruit!

As I walked out one bright Christmas morning ...

The sea was rippling in shining folds, but debris from past wild nights and high tides was plentiful with shingle piled and overflowing weathered wooden groynes

We talk of flotsam and jetsam - the OED says that in 1697 "flotsam" was defined as

signifying any goods that by shipwrecke be lost, and lie floting or swimming vpon the toppe of the water.

so not flotsam, as it was ashore already

so, perhaps Jetsam - again from the OED seen as early as 1491, but this from 1678

Jetson or Jetsam, that which being cast over board in a time of Shipwrack, is found lying on the shore, and so belongs to the Lord,

I think the Lord wouldn't want to bother with this lot, but it has a certain abandoned grace of its own

and some, in it's fragile lacyness echoed the waves on the sunshiney shore

Beachy Head, as ever, calm on the horizon

evening walk

Yesterday, in line with my commitment to walk regularly, I took myself to the sea again. I marched down the hill lickety split, as the sun was low in the sky and I wanted to be able to watch it dip behind the bulk of the Downs. I got there just in time to see its disc gradually slip down, down, down behind their dark mass.

 The tide was out, and the shore stretched like a rippled mirror in front of me

 small stones and sculpted sand bringing texture to the reflections

and a pair of very happy little dogs came racing beside the waves, delighted to be out in the evening air with a willing slave to throw ball for them

I really must make sure I do this often. it does the soul good as well as the body

Evening seaspray

 

 

recent pleasures

I've taken a number of pictures recently; things that caught my eye which I thought you might enjoy.

two evenings ago, the rolling clouds spilling over the rim of Beachy Head at low tide, 

the lights of Eastbourne lining the edge of the water

 watched by evening beach visitors - reminding me of Friedrich and Kroyer

the colour hard to capture, almost surreal

yesterday the little fox, taking his ease on the grass next door

 keeping a sharp eye on me, quietly stepping down the lawn to capture his face through the trees

 and just now, in the night garden, peppered with small night noises, the Plough hanging above the trees

 the nearly full moon

 rising over the house

Good night ....

Evening light

Beachy Head

Feeling lucky

I mentioned, I think, that I've been going to a series of Pain Management classes at the local hospital. We are nearing the end of this now, two more sessions to go and then we're on our own until a follow up session in September. It has been an enriching experience, also humbling, encouraging and at times just plain fun as a small group of people, all with similar problems have got to know each other.

The course works on a number of levels, combining advice about how to run your life so as not to increase the level of pain you live with; some gentle daily exercises; a bit of cognitive behaviour therapy and relaxation techniques. It has reinforced the way that I try to manage the daily challenge of not letting pain and discomfort take over; a recent session had a brief section on mindfulness; central, to me, for coping. It has also shown me how much others have to deal with, reminding me that actually things are not that bad really. Yes, my body hurts every day, and has done so pretty much for the past twenty odd years, with intermittent pain going back to when I was eleven, but there are people on the course who have far worse pain to cope with, who have had to give up a lot more than I have because of it.

One of the things we have looked at is pacing and goal setting. A simple concept, but very important. You set yourself achievable small goals, and work out how to get there by breaking them down into even smaller goals, so that you have a series of targets that you know you can achieve. You work at the pace you can manage whatever your day is like, rather than going all out for it on a good day, then having a setback because you've done too much, so end up feeling downhearted. My overall goal is to be able to walk from the holiday home we have in the Lakes to a pub and back, a distance of I guess about 6 miles. I know I could do it last year - just, but since then I seem to have lost a significant level of what little fitness I had. This is where the pacing bit comes in, if you'll forgive the pun. I set myself a target of walking from home down to the beach and back again twice a week. This is about 1 1/2 miles there and back and I have to take a rest at the bottom of the hill before turning round to come home. On the way back it us uphill all the way and by the time I get home I am puffed and my heart has had a good, albeit short workout. Doesn't sound much really, but I know that others who attend this course couldn't manage even that little expedition; I know that, before she died, my Mum couldn't have got from the front door to the road, so I revel in the thumping of my heart as I toil up the hill, so pleased that I can manage even this small feat, and hoping that it will build and build so that, by the end of September, that walk to the pub and back will be a breeze.

The course also talks about giving yourself a reward to spur you to achieving these little, baby steps goals. What could be a better reward than knowing that, when I reach the bottom of the hill, this wonderful view is just waiting for me, day after day after day.

Beachy Head sunset

Lucky eh?

front garden thoughts

Last week two very nice men built me a front garden. They are Ray and Dan of Rotherview Nurseries, just North of Hastings.

It has gone from this rather bleak shingle desert

to this

We’ve known them for some years, our old home being two doors down from Dan’s. They build us a lovely pergola, patio and path in the old place, with alpines tucked in here and there round a strange little rockery we made from large pebbles and odd bits of Victorian groyne collected one by one from the beach. 

This was where the golden yew lived, at the end of the path to the ponder spot.









This time more planting was needed. We planned it together, combining those plants I  had propagated from the old place with plants from the nursery, Ray having skilfully teased out of me what I wanted from the vague ideas in my head – “well sort of flow’ey with colours ranging from red to purple”, while Dan provided added suggestions.

The garden is south facing, the only really sunny spot so far, as the back is so shaded by the house. I want to catch the light, as I have indoors, but this time with plants. There are grasses to waft in the breeze and shimmer through much of the year, a weeping silver birch, one of my favourite trees, low growing plants to spill over the wall facing the house and a wisteria in a huge pot that I hope will ramble over some trellis and provide a wall of soft purple when it finally flowers. I so look forward to it all growing to maturity.


 My lavender cuttings were just about enough to provide a hedge right across the front, where I hope it will spill through the black picket fence and delight passers by with its scent and texture. Here they are all lined up.

Just now it looks rather empty as the plants are all little and are waiting to put on their spring/summer splendour. I can't wait!

I do feel very strongly that the front garden is the bit you share with the world – it’s not so much there for show, in a look at me sense, rather a collection of flowers, textures, scent and colour that you give to the people around you. When I was still at school, I often walked the 3 miles or so home when the weather was good. The walk started up on a high point to the North of Hastings called The Ridge – a final sweep of the South Downs before they merge into the Weald of Kent. The view from up there was wonderful, so as I walked, with my schoolbag bag clasped heavy in front of me, I swooped and swam in mind, out above the rooftops over the far sparkling sea to Beachy Head. Then as my route flowed down the hill, I walked through seventies suburbs with heather, azalea, birch and well tended lawns until it levelled out onto a busy bit of main road where the houses hid behind high fences to shelter from the noise. Once past that I dipped down again, the road meandering along the side of Alexandra Park  and through time from the thirties right back to Victoriana. This was where I lived, sheltered on front by the park, and behind by a steep hill of allotments and scrub where, in the thirties/forties my great aunt’s companion kept a mushroom farm. Through all this urban part of my walk, I would watch front gardens; some scruffy and weedy with unkempt edges, or no edges at all; some beautifully, almost artificially manicured, with green moss free lawns mown to within an inch of their lives and the odd gnome. In between these extremes were those gardens with blowsy irises or beautiful trees that attracted me, gave me pleasure. These I watched through the year as I walked past them until, at last, I would dip down yet again, crossing the park to reach home. There Ganna would be waiting for me since, for much of the time, Mum was out at work. I loved those gardens, they allowed my mind to disengage from school, where I always felt out of place, to drift for a while in dreamland, until I had to reengage with the curious world I lived with at home, quiet and sedate and, now I look back on it, from another time period entirely.