Salty meanderings

It’s come to sitting in an almost-empty greenhouse, with books, snacks and a radio.

Who would have thought?

Notions of finding friendship and inspiration in seminar rooms and university libraries have been locked-down.

Attempts at playing the guitar continue, scrubbing away at old tunes in new ways; seeking new intimacies, hoping renewed commitment will bring advances.  Aspiration, rather than attainment.

Friends in distant places share their own distractions: D, his illustrations; Ja his steady piano progress; Jo pampers his new MTB with small adjustments and lube.  Everyone is trying to carry on.

My mother catches up sleep in front of endless bulletins and podium announcements.  She wakes, repeating the numbers as they’re read.  It could be units of flour, water and sugar at precise minutes Celsius.  After so many years of waiting, she has the War back, floating between Bergamo and Dunkirk.

The room is dim, despite the scattering of spring sunshine.  Blinds and curtains half-closed to spread panic and confusion among “interferers” – carers and concerned professionals to you and I.   She needn’t worry: the visits have been paused, pending yet another consultation, by telephone, of course.  One tries not to lose hope.

So now it’s just the two of us, left to do our worst.  No visits, no clubs or trips to garden centres, no respite nights in cheap motels.  I’ll hang on to the bath bombs in the hope of better days.

The greenhouse does its job, permitting life to thrive where it otherwise might not.  Glass admits the sun, whilst keeping the northerly at bay.  Planters in the garden offer seasonal relief (a gift bestowed by the diligence and love of N during her year here).  The clusters of chrysanthemums seem to reach towards me.

Too windy for the bicycle.  Too cold to sit beside the river, reading.  I tried it yesterday.  They say the wind will come around to a south-westerly by Sunday.  Ojalá!

A bee buzzes close.  Just outside the glass.  A bumble bee.  Solitary.  Wrapped in her overcoat: furry, black with a deep orange trim.  She enters an ornamental conifer.

Metaphor time:  The waves in Weston Bay are notoriously short once they’re on the shelf.  Choppy.  Steep.  The boat was around four metres – too short to straddle crests.  The tide flows clockwise round the bay, regardless of tide direction in the Severn.  We made the transit from the Axe and Brean Down out beyond Knightstone, towards Sand Point.  It was uncomfortable, especially with gusts like these today.  Impossible to settle till you reached the deeper water and the long rolling swell.  Oh, I loved that feeling.

Here, too, things are choppy, unpredictable and generally agitated.  Deeper water seems a long way out.  With visibility down to a mile or less, it’s hard to navigate, moving slowly, taking soundings.  Always alert.  There’s no respite.  The sensible thing would be to give up, turn around and follow your track back to the moorings.  Except you can’t.  In this storm, all ports are out of range.  The best you can hope for is to weather it.

The lulls, such as they are, provide limited relief.  The chance to remember why you’re here in the first place.  To enjoy what’s around you.  But lulls, by their definition…

You learn that the trick is not to take the sea head-on, but to come at a slight tack.  To roll with it a little.  But the waters here are treacherous.  They knock a craft around.  Especially one as vulnerable as this.  The character of this place is well known.  Quick to turn.  Generally for the worse.  It was always thus.  Just so easy to forget.

These flat-bottomed cruisers are designed for more gentle ways and will always struggle in a bay with conditions so harsh it makes me wonder why I brought it here at all.  I think of lost cultures on warm and distant shores.  This boat was conceived with sun and flat calm seas in mind.  On such a foreshore might my bones still wash up.  Remember Phlebas.

Push come to shove, I’ll always take Phoenicians over Philistines.

Better check the seed trays are still moist.  Batten down.  The weather's coming in.