Overy Windmill

I'm pretty sick of taking dead men's suits to charity shops.
There is something very particular about suits, they are somehow so much more whole (obviously, in the literal sense, but also in other, much more visceral, ways).
But there is also the person in the pockets (extra).
Dad was pretty obsessive, the Imelda Marcos of the suit world, there is large wardrobe full. He was tall and pretty stylish (neither of which I have inherited). There are handkerchiefs for each top pocket. There is an ordinary tissue behind each cotton handkerchief. There are lists, a profusion of pens, receipts, notes and jottings and a potential kazoo orchestra of black plastic combs.

My husband didn't really do suits but had jackets. Again, his pockets held the essence of him, full of poetry mostly, and at his funeral he was dressed looking beautifully dapper in his 'Our Man in Havana'-suit that he had worn on our wedding day. And he was beautiful.
I could never have taken that suit anywhere. It was mine and his. It could only go with him with a photo of us in his pocket.

G had suits and jackets that he wore for work. He was a bit of a showman and had the most magnificent waistcoats and a fob watch that would have made him the perfect extra in The Entertainer. He could do debonair and work Westmorland magic with stories and tales ... most of them pretty tall.
That was the first time I had had to do the grim task and I got stuck on the stairs as I went to take them away. I couldn't move up or down and just sat half way, literally struck down by grief and frozen between life and death.
The trick is to keep moving ... along the lines of Emily Dickinson.

On my way back from Hunstanton I took advantage of a brief appearance of some late sunshine and braced myself against the biting cold wind off the North sea at Overy. I had the bank and all the miles of beach from Scolt Head to Holkham to myself and I watched an egret with what I thought was shaky leg syndrome until I was delighted to realise that he, or she, was stirring up the mud to snack on shrimps.