10th April from the West Cliff Green, Bournemouth

A driving drizzle and a bumping wind. A lobster boat is braving the corrugated waves in the bay. A lone seagull passes low down along the cliff edge. The tree trunks have assumed a strange two tone look where the rain has made the windward side a dark chocolate brown against the silver grey to leeward. There are no breaks in the flat grey canopy of clouds. There are bathers braving the steep breakers on the beach but then there are now every day of the year. Other walkers are buttoned up tight with hoods pulled down over their ears. Something like a large branch or tree root has washed up along the tides edge. A passer by has Noticed it and is crouching down taking pictures of it from every angle as the surf washes over it.

From 10th April 2022

The blue sky is smeared with very high, thin traces of white cloud. The cutting wind hustles the sea so that it is like rows of old men in rain coats returning home from work all with their coat collars turned up. I am surpried to find that bluebells are found naturally on cliffs so ours are probably wild and not garden escapes as I first thought. There is a huge variety of colour in the same patch from deep blue to mauve, to pink to white. Pussy willow is beginning to show leaves. As the resident gulls are being fed by the man who is Friend to the Crows, the huge dark shape of a Greater Black Back Gull slices through the air and on along the cliffs disdainful of the melee. #Bournemouth #WestCliffgreen #Spring #April #gulls #bluebells.

From 10th April 2016

The rain is falling steadily if not urgently. The grey of the evening pulls in. The sea is an oiled steel save where it is a madness of foam high up on the beach. A thick mass of cloud squats over the distant Purbeck Hills and as the street lights begin to come on they make shiny patches on the pavement and steps. I have a roof between me and the night. Thinking of those who do not.