Seaside Musings.

The sea yesterday was a pale silver-grey with splashes of sunlight on the still surface. Lovely, and quite late-summery rather than Autumnal. In fact we have been having rather lovely weather, lots of sun and warm enough to walk by the sea every day and to sit on the balcony with coffee,lunch or tea. It sounds as if I'm always either eating or walking! And I guess that's not so far from the truth. I do feel very fortunate to be living here, because it doesn't seem to be the same everywhere. I often look North towards the Downs and see heavy black clouds leaning on the hills while we are basking in sunshine.

What do I do with the rest of my time at the moment? Well, I've been writing fairly regular articles for one of the local Estate Agents, whenever they want something a
little bit different - different from the usual fairly painful and banal property descriptions, that is (not to mention the painful grammar and sentence structure!). I quite enjoy doing these, it exercises the "writing muscle" a bit, though in a fairly limited way. And it does seem to be doing the trick - the agents are happy with what I write and their sales are going quite well. My other main occupation is to do a day's gardening once a fortnight or so for my lovely Therapist. This is great and very enjoyable, but she is in East Grinstead, so it's an hour and a half round trip and as petrol is so pricey just now, I don't go more often. It's only until winter sets in anyway, and while the ground is workable. Last week I worked for four and a half hours, mostly solid digging, until I could dig no more. My digging was made more enjoyable though by the delightful small ladies' fork I found at the Car Boot Sale last weekend. It was, amazingly, just £1, and is a complete delight to work with. I have also been choosing some plants and ordering hedging for her garden. Nice to spend other people's money, and get to see the results. In another existence, I would love to have been a proper gardener. What a wonderful life!

I collected Grandson from school on Friday and brought him home for the night. This has become something of a routine, and one which I am enjoying very much. He had had a really busy week at school and was happy just to chill out. We lit a fire (for the first time this year) watched a movie and ate sausages and mash.Perfick. Daughter came to pick him up on Saturday morning, and we all went for brunch in George Street. Today I went to the Car Boot again, on another lovely sunny morning, and Daughter was taking Grandson to a birthday party at midday. He went as Darth Vader, as the theme of the party was Star Wars. Very sophisticated these parties. I seem to have rushed around all day, and finally sank down at home with a cup of tea at about 5.15pm. Then the phone range and it was one of my BBFs asking if I had forgotten that I was meeting her at the cinema at 5pm! I felt really awful because of course I had forgotten - luckily she was not furious with me, which was better than I deserved. It's not as if I have a frantic social life after all, though I do have a busy week coming up. One of my London BFs is coming to stay on Tuesday, just for one night, and we are going out to dinner at L'Eglise for the first time in months. That will be gorgeous. On Wednesday I'm off to East Grinstead again for a day's gardening, hopefully putting in some of the hedging if it has arrived, and then on Thursday I'm planning a trip to London to meet Son for lunch. Great, I'm so looking forward to seeing him for a catch-up. On Friday it's the start of Half Term so I'll be picking Grandson up early from school and that will be another week gone...
At least life's not boring here in Brighton.