Starting with sunshine

We woke to a calm sunny sky, blue, and with no signs of rain cloud: crisp and definitely uplifting.  So off we set for the sea: Selsey.  Given all the rain we had had recently, and the wild winds, we reckoned that the long concrete walk above the shingle there was probably not only the nearest, but the least likely to be flooded walk.  We were not disappointed.

The sun shone all the time, the clouds remaining tiny puffy bread rolls or thin wisps, and the sea was still strong and fascinating.  I spent a long time simply mesmerised by the different swells forming and dashing themselves on the shingle.  Such a hypnotic wonderfully useless occupation trying to follow them - and even more impossible to try to predict!

And the comedy of the teenage gulls, all sat at one point - opposite the slipway to a fishing area - they had parked themselves far enough back from the crashing edge so that they simply bobbed safely as they waited.  No-one told them that it was a holiday! 

Last time we had visited I had taken a snap of the debris on the shingle just where they were stationed - but no sign of that now. 

Indeed the sea had thrown the shingle itself onto the walkway, and at times I had to go mountaineering over much larger piles than this.

A glorious start to the year, even though it was a Tuesday.  I don't know if it is a wholly Greek superstition, or Pontic Greek, or just my family, but the women in my extended family would shriek if I planned to start a new embroidery on a Tuesday: it was certain to go wrong.  No enterprise should be started on a Tuesday - I think it was because Byzantium fell to the Ottomans on a Tuesday.  Who knows - luckily I was educated in Scotland, and take each day as it comes.