under another sun

A cold and windy day today. Indoors, Lorraine working on her assembly and me recording Skelton Yawngrave stuff, which involved Lorraine dropping the book into my hands from above, and also toying with The Dream Home , one of my horror short stories. Spoke to Mum too, who is rather bored. Lorraine and I had a walk up towards Hollingbury, dropping off a bottle of wine for Joe a few doors up, who is a GP. Lorraine had written a thank you note in it, just to be nice. I had spoken to him a few weeks ago and he looked haggard and definitely under pressure. It was Lorraine's idea. We walked up towards Hollingbury, then Lorraine turned back to do a spot of gardening and I carried on for a bit. Windy and spots of rain, but at least this meant there were few people to dodge. Had to tidy away chairs in the garden tonight, as I feared they were going to blow away. Lorraine waiting for the clownish Prime Minister's speech before completing her assembly. Johnson's speech full of ho...

Toby and the Turtle Lots of work on Skeletons first thing this morning. Only a few days away now from completing the first draft. Spoke to Mum, and talked about how I have more Achilles heels than a spider, and the rubbishness of art dealers, among other subjects. Just setting off for a swim when I heard a shout from behind me and there was Toby emerging speedily from the end of my twitten having arrived earlier than expected. So instead of a swim we went for a walk along the seafront and pier. It was incredibly windy and stormy this afternoon. In fact it was the strongest wind I can remember down here. The sea was white, and there was one of those winds you can lean into. We walked along noticing the Union flag in tatters over a seafood shop. Drops of spray and rain stung our faces. There were still people enjoying the pier, and certain rides, which was rather amazing. We hung off it watching very big waves rolling in. After this exhilaration, we repaired to the Mock Turtle for cream...

Stormy weather Back to work. A dark, wet morning, which turned into an extremely windy one, with 77 mile an hour winds at Heathrow, and 10 people being killed across the country. On the train listening to Tolkien to blot out a feeling of being quite dismally down. But this passed quite quickly once I'd reached work. Got an email from Sarah saying Florida was gripped by a London fog, while we had one of their hurricanes. Between meetings, the Gnome and I spent the day looking down at the wind blowing so hard that spray was picked up from the river surface and whipped about. Trees were blown down nearby and roads were closed off. From our vantage point, the Gnome and me watched some new fencing being blown down on the building site nearby. I took a walk outside for a while and it was really buffeting, and almost difficult sometimes to stay on your feet. Chatted with the FB who had flown in from New York this morning. He said the last fifteen minutes of the flight was a bit lively. Wi...