Beached

Drenched to the skin this morning as I walked the dogs, who looked at me mournfully and kept turning for home, and got back to a cold house and a tax bill. I thought the camera wouldn't emerge from the case, but suddenly around midday the black clouds rolled away and the sun streamed down.

I had to go to Blyth hospital to read to the patients there but on the way I took this. Blyth was once an important port shipping coal across the world, now it's rather a sad place, full of youngsters out of work kicking aimlessly about the windswept streets, and an air of resignation. But there's still a spirit there, a refusal to be beaten into submission.

These beach huts sum it up. There were dogs walkers, cyclists and mums with pushchairs all out in the late sunshine, and on the beach fisherman on the shoreline. The pulse of the place. You could feel it.