This distant northern sea ...*

So much happened today I find it hard to remember that it began, as usual, in the supermarket, rather better stocked today and somehow less vacant: I was told that several new staff have been hired. Good. This was followed by breakfast, natch, then a pastoral visit from David our priest - my distinction, as we count him a friend, but today he was working as well as drinking coffee with us. 

The afternoon saw us do this unusual social thing: having friends in for afternoon tea. I feel it should have capitals: Afternoon Tea. It was fun preparing for it - there was The Cake, of course, which turned out to be totally delicious and very lemony, but there was also the business of thinking about the wedding china before realising that we no longer, it seems, possess the skills to manoeuvre cup, saucer, plate and cake on our laps - and we, of course, don't possess a nest of tables, which would have made things easier. But I have a set of matching bone china mugs or relatively dainty size, and I have some of grandmother's gold-rimmed bone china plates that seemed rather larger than our own ones, and I served jasmine blossom tea (there were choices, never fear) out of a couple of teapots - and I found the water jug! And I mustn't forget the dainty paper napkins bought long ago in a pottery in Quimper ... Anyway we all ate too much cake and talked and talked for a couple of hours. Fun. 

We followed that by a walk along the West Bay, which is where I got my main photo, one I waited ages for taking dud after dud - it's hard to capture a wave looking properly impressive. We could hear the roar of the shingle long before we arrived, another Dover Beach moment. We arrived home soaked from a couple of downpours and convinced ourselves that we could manage some dinner after all.

My sister rang as I was cooking, with the not unexpected but shocking nonetheless news that her husband had died in hospital after a relatively short illness, so I spent a chunk of the evening phoning my own family and my cousin before falling asleep over the news. 

Finally, as National Poetry Day ends, my extra is of one of my very favourite poems by R.S. Thomas - The Musician.

* Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold