Cloud watching...

It’s not often that you find yourself looking out from behind a cloud in the sky, but here I am, that’s me – or at least half of me. I’m not sure which half though. You’ll need to look closely to make me out, but once you have the eye the rest might follow. Probably best not to look for ears, looks like I’m not listening.

Yes, me in the blue sky the morning after that awful day of rain. Not warm, but not cold and maybe the promise of a little real warmth later. Maybe that’s what I’m looking for from my vantage point high above the ground, the sun. So off to the pub for a couple of pints of an excellent bitter brewed in the village just up the road, hand pulled and real, a treat. Some lunch with my mum and dad and uncle and aunt and cousin and wife and daughter and afterwards a bit of a walk on the beach, some sun and a lot of breeze, the mountains in the distance hazy, the wind whipping across almost completely still waters. Low tide, but not low enough to be able to walk out to the rock where the gulls sit waiting to dive for the silver fish that I know must live in the darkening sea beneath them.

We didn’t get to the crab pool rocks. My mum and dad couldn’t walk that far, but a stroll was enough, and looking up at the city of holes the sand martins had built in the sand-earth cliffs - darting and diving, in then out high above me – and looking up past the cliffs, gazing into the blue sky still further - there was I looking down on me.

The whip of the wind as the sun passed behind a cloud. Men and children changing out of wetsuits, picking up shoes, searching for buckets and balls, dragging their smart white speedboats out of the suddenly almost choppy sea. Five o’clock and shadows, my cloud gone; all picked up and included in the growing greyness of the sky. Time to go.

Anyone for a cup of tea? Perhaps another beer then.