Lakeland Dipper (further afield)

Brancaster
Reader, I did ...
No, for a change, I didn’t roll out of bed into my wellies. I survived the night and the forecast was for rain today so I hopped on my bike to catch the high tide at Brancaster beach. The beach road was entirely and deeply covered by the tide so I went down the sea wall to the beach and bravely leapt in. It was pretty dismal but still just about dry when I emerged, only a fine mizzle. I had to numb that part of my brain that was telling me that I’ve taken leave of my senses. A Dunlin darted past and did a double take. I was on my way back by half nine.

The rain started and I got back to sorting and took the next load to the hospice shop (we’ve got a system going now, she knows my name and gives me one of their crates, I fill it and return it and then we start all over again). Then onto the recycling centre - it turns out there’s nowhere for those encyclopaedias. I had a big sack of general rubbish but gone are the days of ditching it (quite right too) but it meant taking cardboard sleeves off videos and separating them and then dismembering all the files of care plans for mum and dad, taking all the notes out of polypockets and separating the plastic from the paper. All pretty depressing. What a pointless business that was in the first place but I guess given our litigious, insurance obsessed world, it drives the whole machine on ... symptomatic of where we have got to. The guy there summed it up saying, ‘when I was little I bought my fish home in a plastic bag. Now the plastic bag comes in the fish’.

I picked up some local mussels and shallots for my tea on my way back (I love the immediacy and freshness of eating here). By late afternoon the day brightened and I went down to Burnham Norton and walked over to Scolt Head Island. The late sun cast long shadows across the empty dunes still echoing with the sounds of the children that played there all summer. I never saw a soul and looked across the miles of empty beach with an unusual number of cormorants flying through. I sat until I saw the first signs of the tide on the turn and then headed back across the marsh as the sun set, startled by the silent stalking barn owl hunting low across the field.