Seas the day

The uncertainties and stresses of recent months have already partially lifted simply with a change of location and some bracing hill walks. It’s amazing how much the novelty of somewhere new can be a distraction from the day to day. My limbo situation has become very monotonous and if it drags on I’ll likely strike a balance between the comfort of friends and the familiar in Cambridge vs visiting other parts of the UK to feel less stuck. All will need to be tempered by Covid restrictions to only do what seems reasonable.

Saying all of this, Seaton isn’t really ‘new’. My dad is from about ten miles away so we visited East Devon regularly as kids and would come to the various seaside towns for day trips. Maybe the key ingredient for the current mood is the sea, and the fact that the sun today has been glorious.

Before settling down with our laptops we had a morning walk with coffee on the promenade as the temperature hovered just above zero. I then spent far too long wrestling with our new organisational email quarantine system, which deprives us of multiple emails that we need. I’ve just about had my fill of quarantine chat. To recover from that, a generous lunch break afforded me the chance to sit with Michelle on the pebble beach and then do the stunning clifftop walk to the neighbouring village of Beer. I enjoyed the ‘beware adders’ sign, and a robin I saw chittering along. I know the sun is a big blazing ball of flaming gases and is therefore on the hotter end of the spectrum, but it felt pleasingly warm on the face today, which I wasn’t expecting.

In the evening, the town was eerily quiet but we sought out fish and chips and ate them standing by a wall on the esplanade. A cold rain started to fall but couldn’t dampen our spirits. We shovelled the remaining chips down our throats and then struggled back up the hill, staving off indigestion.