Breakwater

An exceptionally bleak day once the dreich set in. I walked round the circuit with my camera double-wrapped. No wind and the flat short light of late November muffled beneath a great mass of low cloud.Piles of rotting leaves. The chalk paths slick as ice.

Down in the bay the road is finally closed off. The gas team are in low spirits as road water threatens to flood their holes as they try and find blockages in the the 100-year old cast iron mains pipe. They do this by saw-drilling a hole into the main and fitting a seal that lets them poke a camera along the main. Once they have cleared the pipe of old plugs they'll push a new plastic pipe through as the new main. They then connect house service supplies to this. Not always easy as they first have to locate the old junctions. A thinner pipe is pushed up the old service pipe. It's laborious and difficult in the uneven terrain of the Bay.

As I walked along the front of the empty bay I noticed a dogfish on the shingle high above the water. Its gills were still working, looking for water. I picked it up by the sandpapery tail and slipped it back into the breaking waves. I was fairly convinced it would be washed back in but I stood there for a while and it was still not returned when I walked by later.

Today's shots are of the old breakwater that keeps the shingle banked up against the houses on the beach - one once lived in by Ian Flemming. (The London-Dover bus is number 007). I flicked the zoom as I was taking the shot to give it that blurry feel.

The other is hawthorn berries on the headland. They remind me of that Seamus Heaney poem, The Haw Lantern.