Brexit and the North Sea

There is a man in the village here on the edge of the North Sea who hasn't been to the next door village for 4 years!  This is his home and you will know now what he feels about Brexit.  Here, we cosmopolitan philosophers types have reeled in different directions at the news of Parliament's  suspension.  We were about to meditate but decided to meet up in the back bedroom and all have our two pennorth of opinion and contrasting emotional responses;  did we get anywhere? NO we didn't but clearly meditation was going to be too much of a struggle as the conversation would be difficult to dismiss from our fevered brains.   So we go down to the sea, scene of the previous wild swimming.  (I should put you right about the naked swimmers, two of the swimmers remained on the beach in clothes  whilst I was the only one to cast myself on the waters in my altogether.  But they did drink the wine and they did giggle like teenagers!)  

That sea knows how to set you straight, to soothe the sensibilities and remind us of how much we all love each other, never mind the different opinions we might have.  It was as still as still, as warm as it could be and empty except for us and one other.  The painter got into her own painting, there she is in the photograph, the horizon empty and huge and no sign of any other country on the other side!  That is what the Suffolk boy thinks, leave those other countries on the other side of the sea.  Me, I'm just interested to see what will happen and of course I do wonder what Jacob Rees Mogg was offered for tea at Balmoral, don't you? 

Casting off!

We have, between the three of us, 223 years of existence, two aged 76 and me, the junior coming in at 71 years old.  We are serious philosophical people.  We decide to go to the beach for what may well be the end of the record breaking warm August Bank Holiday.  We have spent so many summers here together with children and grandchildren and we love it.  The bank holiday ended yesterday but as we are retired our holiday continued and we decided to make the most of it.  We had already had wine for lunch and slept it off in the afternoon while the summer sun continued to shine.  Then, when it began to cool, we rose up, packed our barbecue bits, our aged bathing costumes, towels and a bar of chocolate and went down to the Shingle beach we love so much.  Everyone else was leaving as the sun went down but we lit our barbecue and chatted over a bottle of wine as the sea crept up towards us.  The barbecue took ages to get going but suddenly, with extra effort from us, it glowed red.  We cooked our sausages, ate them in buns with mustard and tomato ketchup washed down with more wine and then, as everyone had left the beach, we cast caution to the winds and staggered naked into the sea which didn't make the slightest complaint about our age or our size or our state of inebriation.  The sea just lapped up to the Shingle and we floated under the misty sky giggling like teenagers, then clambered up the shingle bank, gathered our belongings and came home to the 10.00 clock news and our grown up selves.