The beach in bloom

Valerian lines the seafront

Late May is a time of wonders by the seaside in Deal. One of the reasons I love this stretch of coast so much is the exuberant burst of wildflowers (and some escaped cultivars) that beautifies the beach as Spring tips into Summer.

Candy-coloured thrift in the pier garden

This year, with so much that is sad and uncertain, the return of the Spring flowers has been an especial cause for rejoicing. I took a walk along the seafront from Deal pier to the cliffs above Kingsdown.

Sapphire-blue cornflower at Hut 55

As someone who is more at home with words than pictures, photography is a new skill, but one I’m enjoying discovering. It helps me to pay attention to the beauty all around, which I might otherwise be too preoccupied to see. Like drawing, it’s all about how carefully you look.

Calendula and dandelions by the fishing boats

Red hot pokers at Kingsdown

Fennel and marguerite daisies

Pretty pinks

Not sure what these delicate flowers are – can anyone help?

Sea kale covered in white blossom

Raindrops on daisies – fresh as they come

Chalk grasslands flowers above the White Cliffs

Spring comes to Lockdown-on-Sea

The Spring arrived all of a sudden, dazzling blue skies scrubbed clean with bracing north-easterly winds. The foliage along the shore started to grow again, green fronds of alexanders and fennel, drifts of pretty blue grape hyacinth and wind-tattered daffodils. Unfortunately, it arrived in tandem with you-know-what.

The three weeks of lockdown have given tantalising glimpses, one hour a day, of the natural world unfolding outside the window. I’m trying hard not to mind all the hours spent inside, while the sun warms the pebbles and the sea sparkles. There’s that precious hour to feel the breeze in my hair, the sun on my face, to hear the waves hissing over the beach. I’ve been alternating a morning run with an afternoon walk, or a bike ride that means I can go just that little bit further in the time allowed.

I’ve been getting to know our surroundings more intimately. A slightly different route, a new road or path to explore, brings new value when you can’t go further afield. I’ve noticed that the pebbles are smaller and more even when I walk close to the waves a little further south along the shore. I’ve noticed the sea cabbage starting to grow again (and wondered what it tastes like, in case of emergency).

Inland, the lambs in the field by Walmer Castle are growing up fast, almost as big as their mothers. A cycle ride towards Sandwich took me past a field of doe-eyed calves, cuddled up peacefully with their mothers. I’ve found a little-used path around a field, through a thicket of blackthorn, fragrant with tiny white blossom, drowsy with bees.

Then there was the amazing morning when we looked out of the window and saw a pair of sleek black shapes cavorting in the waves. Expecting seals, we got the binoculars and saw fins! We grabbed the camera and ran to the shore, where we managed a couple of shots of what we think are porpoises, playing in the early dawn light.

Best of all, the sun has warmed the sea just enough to make a quick dip pleasurable (although not for long). There’s nothing more refreshing after a run than wading into the sea. In recent days, the waves have been gentle.  The rising sun blazes a golden path across the surface, inviting you into the silky water. And emerging into the sun, cold but glistening, makes me feel like there’s nothing I can’t handle today.

Stormy weather

Storm Ciara blew into Deal early on Sunday morning, rattling the windows and whistling around the masts of the dinghies pulled up high on the shingle. Through the window I could see white water crashing onto the shore, starlings flung around the darkened sky like a handful of dry leaves. It was the first big storm since I’ve lived here.

I couldn’t resist taking the camera down to the shore, well wrapped up in my sailing jacket and waterproofs.

I didn’t quite need to be tied down by a length of stout rope, like ‘big wave hunter’ George Mortimer (whose eye-popping work featured in Turner Contemporary’s excellent Seaside Photographed exhibition last year). But walking was difficult as I was buffeted along by the wind, so I lay on my front and propped the camera up, watching through the viewfinder as the waves churned and roiled, throwing up a wall of salt spray.

It was pretty thrilling. I can see how you could get addicted to the thrill of big wave hunting, inching closer and closer in the quest for the perfect photograph of the perfect storm.

Further out at sea, I could see ferries sheltering by the Goodwin Sands, unable to dock. The port at Dover was closed; no sailing dinghies or fishing boats would set out from the beach today. Even the cafe at the end of the pier had closed, worried about customers and staff being blown away. I was glad to see that the Deal lifeboat was safely on shore, unlike their comrades down the coast at Hastings. It was not a day to be at sea.

This morning dawned bright, clear and cold. I ran along the sea path to Kingsdown with the sea gentled, long waves rolling steadily to shore. To my left, the golden sun rose clear over the waves into a pale blue sky, while on my right, the almost-full pale moon lingered over Walmer Castle, on its way down in the west. Between the two I enjoyed a moment of peace, before the next storm blows in.

2019: a year in 10 books

Well, 2019 was a bit bumpy, wasn’t it? As always, I took refuge from the vicissitudes of the UK’s fortunes with a lot of good books. Looking over my list this year, it’s quite heavy on dystopia, with some unflinching real life reportage and a top-note of hope.

In no particular order, I enjoyed:

1. John Lanchester, The Wall. An all-too-believable future Britain, grimly keeping out the Others. Beautifully written, with the best exploration of cold and boredom I have ever read. Sure, it was bleak, but the humour and humanity kept me gripped to the bitter end.

2. Margaret Attwood, The Testaments (and The Handmaid’s Tale). I began by re-reading The Handmaid’s Tale, which I first read more than 25 years ago, before diving into The Testaments. In both books I was most interested in the way Attwood showed how oppressive regimes maintain their position by exploiting our fear and self-interest. Everyone thinks they would resist – but would we really?

3. Various authors, Refugee Tales III. The latest edition of stories from around the world, washing up on our shores. You can’t think of someone as other when you’ve listened – really listened – to their story.

4. Alan Moore, From Hell. Graphic novels are well outside my usual comfort zone. I read this for research for my next novel, and found it unsettling, gripping and immersive. From Hell was a tough one, with far more horror (graphically depicted) than I usually read. But a forcible introduction to the genre.

5. Anna Burns, Milkman. God, I loved this book. The unmistakeable voice of the narrator, the absurdity of the humour, the all-enveloping claustrophobia within which horrors that would be tolerated nowhere else seem normal.

6. Toni Morrison, Jazz. I’d not read this novel until Morrison’s death was announced this year. The obituaries sent me back to her output, and I had my eyes opened to the formal inventiveness of her work, especially in this spiky, riffing, cut-up novel of life on the edges of New York’s Harlem.

7. Ali Smith, Spring. Third in the quartet of seasonal novels from Smith, and the one that takes her closest to the Refugee Tales project, of which she is patron. Her experience of visiting the detention centre at Gatwick comes through clearly in this novel of hope, redemption and the power of stories.

8. Kerry Hudson, Lowborn. I was lucky enough to catch Kerry Hudson talking about her visceral memoir at the Bookseller Crow independent bookshop in Crystal Palace this year. It will break your heart and re-make it, with a bit more space inside.

9. Diana Evans, Ordinary People. More Crystal Palace memories, just as I leave the place where I’ve lived for the past 17 years. An ordinary love story set among ordinary people in an ordinary London suburb. In extraordinarily clear prose, it explains why love is not always enough.

10. Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls. This was the book that started my year – an astonishing conjuring-up of the stink and guts of war, and the misery that it inflicts on the non-combatants – the women, the children, the girls.

Good morning sunshine!

As we ease into December, one blessing of the shorter day emerges – I’m witness daily to the most spectacular sunrises.

Our flat at Deal faces due east, which means the sun rises directly opposite our windows, over the sea. Around half past six, when I open the blinds, the sky is denim blue or  pewter grey, a few streaks of pink playing above the horizon. By seven, the clouds are underlit with rose gold, like a renaissance painting with cherubs and angels.

Then there’s the moment where the great round disc of gold appears on the horizon, bathing everything in light, before – too often – hiding its face again in a low bank of cloud. Sometimes, that’s the only time we see the sun all day. But what an entrance.

This morning, I headed out for a run along the sea front at seven, the sun still hidden in clouds shrouding the horizon. The light was milky, the sea unusually still, mirroring the lightening sky. The grass and paths were rimed with frost. Skeins of migrating birds flew low over the gentle waves, long trains of them on a determined journey to or from our shores.

Along the beach, the clumps of oak and scrub, the stands of dried fennel and Alexanders with the last of their seeds clinging to their heads, the dark berries of ivy, shimmered with ice crystals, melting rapidly in the first of the sun’s rays. The air was sharp and I felt glad to be alive, the great dome of the sky arching above me.

I take photographs of these sunrises obsessively, hoping somehow to capture the subtlety of the light, the colours. My photos never come close to the glory of the original, but perhaps give some clue as to why I love the mornings so much in Deal.