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This morning I sat in the dentist’s waiting room whilst Jackie kept an appointment.
During this time I finished reading Bruce Goodman’s ‘Bits of a Boy’. Given the amazing number of spurious dental appointments young Bruce wangled, this was probably quite appropriate. This autobiographical work must have been hidden away for at least half a century. No-one could possibly take us right into the mind of a boy at various stages of life unless he was that boy – then. Read it. On line. Or downloaded. It is a must for entertainment, for history, and for atmosphere. Oh, the memories it stirred in me.
After lunch Jackie drove us to Lepe and back.
Attracted by a group of tiny ponies we stopped at Norley Wood where Jackie waited in the car for me to photograph the creatures.
Other cameras and mobile phones came into play. One woman took her photos through an open car window;
another group walked up to, and petted the animals.
They fully understood why I named this windswept pony Donald.
I have mentioned before that gorse in the forest is regularly thinned out by controlled burning. For this reason an unusually great number of larger ponies grazed on the left hand side of the road outside Beaulieu.
A few, more reluctant, after the land had cooled, to leave their familiar territory had returned to the other side, sometimes, ghostlike, reaching up into the remaining charred bushes, sometimes foraging on the grass.
There are still a large number of waterlogged trees in pools around the forest, offering, like these near Exbury, many arboreal reflections.
How did these tyres come to be in the water?
As usual, mallards, had occupied another recent pool.
So windy was it at Lepe that the waves were extremely choppy.
One yacht made its way without sail;
others, against the backdrop of the Isle of Wight, leaned at an impressive angle;
and a sailboarder skimmed across from the island and back in the blink of an eye.
Gorse bushes and rugged trees on the clifftop bent with the wind;
and daffodils lit the bank above the Watch House.
This evening we dined at Daniel’s Fish and Chips restaurant in Highcliffe. Jackie added onion rings to her cod and chips. My supplements were mushy peas and a roll and butter. I drank tea, and Jackie didn’t.
