Clouds - When the Storm Clouds Gather

Living over a Blackpool Promenade pub in the mid-sixties was wonderful and the ever-changing views from the front windows never lost their fascination for any of us. My mother, when she wasn’t busy, sat in the bay window of our living room, often accompanied by my nanna, a frequent visitor.  My father kept a pair of binoculars on the window sill and liked to look at the horizon on a clear day.

I sat with my mother one sunny day, nothing special, just watching holiday-makers on the sands. It was full of deck-chairs, wind-breakers and families having fun.

“They will be coming off the beach in a minute.”  I remember my mother saying. She told me to look at the clouds coming in with the tide, how they were darkening. The horizon had vanished into the blur of grey and dusky pink that was moving closer until it covered the sun and what was left of blue sky. A rumble of thunder was followed by huge raindrops. People on the beach made haste to gather their belongings and make a run for shelter. Some dashed under South Pier, but they would have to move again as the tide came in. Mum and I watched the lightning fill the sky like electric charges breaking the clouds, and the rain, now heavy, sweeping across the promenade, not a soul in sight.

Many years later I recognised the same cloud formation. We were having a family holiday in Pembrokeshire, my husband and I with our two young children. Between Saundersfoot and Amroth there is a lovely stretch of beach and rock pools at Wiseman’s Bridge, so called because of the small, stone built bridge over the stream of fresh water filtering from the land to the sea. There were toilets nearby, a shop for ice creams and always somewhere to park. The only down-side was clambering over unstable rocks to get on to the beach or down the concrete path on the other side of the bridge carrying picnic, towels, fishing nets, buckets and spades and our beach tent. My husband and I would struggle to feed the flexible poles through the correct channels in the beach tent, especially if it was breezy, but when it was finished and anchored with rocks, it was perfect. I’m sure modern day versions are simpler, but those days are gone. We were all in or close to the tent, tucking into our picnic when I noticed the clouds on the horizon and wondered how long we had before the rain would arrive. Should we pack up and go to the car taking into account getting across the rocks again, or all four of us huddle together in the tent with the open side fully zipped up? I’ve got a feeling that we did both, on separate occasions. I’ll have to ask the kids.

It’s lovely to lie back on the ground and watch the sky on a summer’s day. Imagine being up there, floating on one of those fluffy, feathery, cotton-wool clouds, just resting.

Looking down on clouds is an enchanting sight, too. Natural beauty.

 

Two choices of poem,

 

Dylan Thomas

 

Shall gods be said to thump the clouds
When clouds are cursed by thunder,
Be said to weep when weather howls?
Shall rainbows be their tunics' colour?

When it is rain where are the gods?
Shall it be said they sprinkle water
From garden cans, or free the floods?

Shall it be said that, venuswise,
An old god's dugs are pressed and pricked,
The wet night scolds me like a nurse?

It shall be said that gods are stone.
Shall a dropped stone drum on the ground,
Flung gravel chime? Let the stones speak
With tongues that talk all tongues.

 

 

and Emily Dickinson

     The sky is low, the clouds are mean,

     A travelling flake of snow

     Across a barn or through a rut

     Debates if it will go.

 

    A narrow wind complains all day

    How some one treated him;

    Nature, like us, is sometimes caught

    Without her diadem.

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Shells - Cockles and Mussels, Alive, Alive Oh

There’s something I’ve always found relaxing about a stroll on a beach and the sound of the sea. Most of the places I visit are coastal or within reasonable striking distance.  It is a strange thing that I live on the Fylde Coast with our wonderful expanse of beaches yet never set foot on them. I can’t remember last time I was on the sands at Blackpool but probably not since my children, now adults, were small.

The beach was my playground when I was a girl. We lived on the front, just the promenade and the tram tracks to cross and I was there, usually with others. After I’d grown out of making sand-pies and digging for water, my interests turned to marine life and I would go looking for creatures. A good place to search was in the rock pools around the outside of the old open-air swimming baths. My mother was not impressed with a collection of starfish I took home in a bucket to our pub and my father was tasked with taking them back ‘before any more climb out on to the stairs’. Starfish getting stuck on the stairs isn’t what you expect to see when you call in the vault for a pint, not even in Blackpool. I was given a lecture on sea-life needing a proper, natural habitat and those poor starfish would have been suffering. I’d done a similar thing with tadpoles in a jam jar a couple of years earlier, before we moved to Blackpool, and I clearly hadn’t learnt, but that’s another story.

These days I look for interesting shells and I’m not harming anything by keeping them. A few times a year my travels take me to the South and South West coasts of Scotland, where I will search for shells and watch our dog having the time of his life in the sea. Storage jars are great for keeping my shells safe and for display purposes. The large mussel shells are a beautiful dark blue in the sunlight and the mother-of-pearl shines on the inside. A couple of trips to the Outer Hebrides gave me the opportunity to find some whiter than white cockle shells. I keep them separate, with a couple of scoops of silver sand I brought home from the Hebridean Atlantic coast.

I’d like to visit the Orkney Islands and bring shells home from there, but maybe I should pay more attention to the coastline right here on my own doorstep, at least for the time being.

 

My own poem,

 

Seashell Keepsake

 

In the corner of a mem’ry box

I found the tiny shell.

It must have meant something to me once,

But now, I cannot tell.

Who wrapped it in some silver paper

Torn from a serviette?

It might be from one of the children

So why would I forget?

I can still recall all thirty names,

That class from ’99.

Those lively, summer-born four year olds

Learning to stand in line.

Just a small, pretty, pale pink spiral

Someone once gave to me,

Now back in the box where I found it

And wrapped up carefully.

 

PMW 2018

 

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

 

 

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The Beach - South Shore

I was nine years old when my family moved to Blackpool. Dad took a pub on South Promenade and my playground was the stretch of beach from the north side of South Pier to the small, ornamental windmill that used to grace the promenade opposite Waterloo Road. I could easily find ‘home’ between those landmarks, though I didn’t venture out alone at that age. I haven’t been there for a long time, but it’s a place where I always feel spiritually ‘at one’ with my departed loved ones. My father exercised our dog there, at least twice a day, early morning and late at night. When I was older I’d go with him sometimes.  My mother often took me out for a treat when my younger sister was in bed. We would go to feed pennies into the fruit machines in The Beachcomber amusements on the pier, maybe play bingo for a bit, then walk along the beach to Central Pier and back again, if the tide was out. My grandmother spent hours in the bay window of our living room just watching the world go by on the prom and the beach. I’ve only got to stand there to feel the love and the closeness of the family and be thankful for an abundance of happy memories, gathered in a short time.

Throughout those childhood summers my sister and I would be taken to play on the sands by our mum, or Nanna when she was visiting, but more often by Auntie Kathy who looked after us. With buckets and spades, towels and sometimes a picnic in a hold-all, we would spend ages trying to cross four lanes of traffic then the tram tracks. The smell of hot-dogs mingled with candy-floss and fried onions. Our bare feet would be roasting on the hot tarmac and we’d be dodging the assortment of spills that messed the pavements. Auntie Kathy always had her sandals on and only took them off when she gave in to our persistent mithering to go paddling. She kept us away from the donkey ride areas, we laughed at her calling ice-lollies ‘lolly-ices’ whenever we had one and she taught me how to pull the heads and tails of shrimps as I ate a couple of ounces worth from the seafood stall. We loved her. She helped us to make sand-pies and castles then sat back to smoke a Park Drive while she watched us get water for the moat. It was much the same with our mum and Nanna and we survived those long, hot summer days of hours on the beach with no sun lotion. We tanned and didn’t burn. Things were different in the mid-60s.

On the gorgeous Pembrokeshire beaches with my children some thirty or so years later, it was jelly-shoes, tee-shirts, sun hats and lotion for arms and legs.

Wherever I go, I’m drawn to the coast and I’ve strolled on some fabulous beaches at home and abroad, but, so far, nowhere can match the stunning silver sand of the west coast of South Uist. It was my first breath-taking view of the Hebrides. There were many more spectacular coastal views, like my photograph of a beach on the Isle of Eriskay where I collected ‘whiter than white’ shells and a thimble full of shimmering sand.
 

My chosen poem was created by one of my favourite poets, Dr John Cooper Clarke, and members of the public who contributed their thoughts of the coast.

 

Nation's Ode To The Coast

Dr John Cooper Clarke

A big fat sky and a thousand shrieks

The tide arrives and the timber creaks

A world away from the working week

Où est la vie nautique?

That’s where the sea comes in…

Dishevelled shells and shovelled sands,

Architecture all unplanned

A spade ‘n’ bucket wonderland

A golden space, a Frisbee and

The kids and dogs can run and run

And not run in to anyone

Way out! Real gone!

That’s where the sea comes in…

Impervious to human speech, idle time and tidal reach

Some memories you can’t impeach

That’s where the sea comes in

A nice cuppa splosh and a round of toast

A cursory glance at the morning post

A pointless walk along the coast

That’s what floats my boat the most

That’s where the sea comes in…

Now, voyager - once resigned

Go forth to seek and find

The hazy days you left behind

Right there in the back of your mind

Where lucid dreams begin

With rolling dunes and rattling shale

The shoreline then a swollen sail

Picked out by a shimmering halo

That’s where the sea comes in…

 

Could this be luck by chance?

Eternity in a second glance

A universe beyond romance

That’s where the sea comes in…

Yeah, that’s where the sea comes in…

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

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