Newhaven Harbour

I'm really tired today. My 'glass is half-empty'. I'm just taking a wee break before going back to do a little bit more work too.

I trained really hard at the weekend, and that invariably affects my mood and how I see the world. 171 hard kilometres on the bike! But I'm also really fed up with the global pandemic and how it's affecting our freedoms. Whilst I've no regrets of moving back to Scotland, I loved living in the Peak District before. Within 5 minutes, I could be on little wooded trails and within 30-minutes on desolate moorland. 

In fact, when I left, I asked my neighbour Ian Mood, a well respected artist,  to paint my beloved Coombes Edge for me. It's right on the edge of the Peak District and from the top, you can see the whole of Greater Manchester in the distance but still feel you are far away from the world. It's nearly always windy up there, the type of wind that blows so hard that it goes up your nose and becomes part of you. Ian captured the emotions of the place perfectly and my painting hangs proudly on my office wall. 

I'm craving that feeling of freedom, away from people, in which my senses are switched on to my surroundings but completely switched off to the wider ills of the world. But every open space in the city has other people there and I find it suffocating. Before lockdown, it was easy to find some semblance of peace. But because people are constrained within such small spaces, we all congregate in the same areas. It's not all bad...more people seem to be walking and cycling. But there's a pervasive feeling of deeper stress amongst many people that's 'Shouting stay away from me'. Some people act as if everything is normal, oblivious to the needs of others and to keep distanced. Others act as if everyone else has the black death and any slight transgression in distancing results in stressed/aggressive behaviours. Of course, there are far more people 'in the middle' acting respectfully. Regardless, it all feels very dystopian! I just feel 

I just feel I want to be somewhere else like one of the Western Isles or down with Dada in Snowdonia where I can escape from it all.

That said, Rosemary and I had a nice walk down to the harbour at lunch. It was windy, the sky was dramatic with heavy deep cloud and the sea was very choppy. The waves were moving very differently, coming from the north west. It looked as if the current/tide and the wind were competing against each other. It was all quite exciting. I just wish I could capture this with my camera in a way that good seascape artists do it with paint.