23rd May from the West Cliff Green, Bournemouth

The sun drips its syrupy golden light over the bright green foliage of the trees and makes long comfortable shadows and clever arrangements of vertical forms. The wind is fresh and strong. The sea is flat like a smoothed out Kit Kat wrapper. A wren jingles at me from the bare branch of a bush and then dances away to find another target for its feisty dawn attitude. A single feather decorates the path.

From 23rd May 2022

I am ten minutes into my walk before I hear my first gull. A herring gull, far out on the bay, its wistful melancholy wail almost lost in the peaceful hush of the wavelets at the tides edge. And then I realise that this is probably the only time of the air that the gulls are not there . I don't mean the gulls themselves are absent, I can see them wandering around on the beach and on the short grass. They are just not part of the soundscape. It is the gulls that usually wake us up with their raucous, bullying argumentative squawking. But today, it is the sound of wood pigeons cooing warmly from every tree and lampost forming a sort of warm undertone to the grey dawn. The small birds are there, of course, but, at times I can walk in almost complete silence. Even the traffic of men and women has not started in the background. The sea itself is virtually flat calm and ripples silver in the brightening morning light. #bournemouth #westcliffgreen #may 

From 23rd May 2021

Sheets of stinging rain from a grey evening sky. The wind is howling and roaring in the tree tops and moaning and whistling through the aerials on the rooftops of the tall flats. The sea is thrashing itself into a lather a good way off shore. The long grass bends before the gale and ragged clumps of alyssum sag across the path. The pigeon has given up flying and walks along beside me on the path. In the sheltered crevice of a brick wall a clump of pink valerian is doing its best to cheer us up.

From 23rd May 2014

The bank holiday has started early in Bournemouth. Packs of middle aged t-shirted men shoulder their way way past afternoon shoppers. They are trying out the town centre bars before going on to the serious stuff later on this evening. At the moment it is loud voices and a sort of forced bonhomie. Later an air of tension and aggression will hang over the town centre . I think of them as shipwrecked sailors far from the certainty of youth adrift on an ocean they do not understand and singing and shouting to keep their spirits up and their thoughts away from the looming rocks of old age and loneliness.