Sleeping dogs lie

About eleven thirty I decided to take the gas boys a cup of tea. I'd done it in the summer in the baking heat. But this meant taking it down in the car. Kettle. Tea bags. Milk. Choc biscuits. To be honest I felt a bit of a charlie.

But they appreciated it as they used digger and two pronged forks to lever huge bits of flint out of the undisturbed chalk.

And God (you up there?) smiled on me. The bay was empty. Bathed in golden light. Still and yet waves. The tide up and in. The vis so vis it was breathtaking.

I snapped away like a good 'un. This poor dogfish and another and another washed up on the tide line. Pathetic and barbaric. Dignified in their deaths. Full of their dogfishedness til the end. Poor bastards.

Many more here. (Not of dogfish.) It was a beautitude.

Later I walked the circuit. It was just too good. A jobbing gardener coming out with his strimmer in hand. I said, 'It's a beautiful day' and he: 'It's come that way, yeah.' So much in the strange reply. 'It's come that way, yeah.' Gave me pause for thought.

But I was hurried now to get round and take a few more shots and fly off to the garage to get two new tyres.

Later, I sat with John in his dimmed room. The golden light - Naples Yellow? - of a clear evening sky, fading, slowly. Clear and lingering. In no hurry to go. The darkness coming slowly.

The bloke who fitted the tyres was off to a fishing comp this weekend on Deal pier. He thought he might try for a 'bag of dogfish' rather than a couple of cod. They'd weigh more, he reckoned.