sea foam – derrickjknight

Flying Foam

Late this morning Sam, Holly, Malachi, and Orlaith visited after another overnight stay at Elizabeth’s, and spent an emotional farewell hour as they left for North Wales on the next stage of their tour catching up with family and friends.

I was quite choked as I watched their hired car turn out of our front drive, and right along Christchurch Road.

The overnight howling gales seemed to have increased, with winds now 60 m.p.h. and unrelenting fierce driving rain.

Jackie and I took a drive down to Milford on Sea to focus on the weather.

What the Japanese call sea flowers flew up as the waves beat on the shining rocks whisking creamy clusters into the air to settle like snow drifts where they would.

With sharp precipitation needles stinging my wet cheeks; sticky salt Supergluing my fingers; rain and spray clouding my specs; gusts ripping at my dripping coat, keeping upright was all I could manage with confidence as I aimed my camera more in hope than conviction.

This evening we dined on Red Chilli’s excellent takeaway meals. My choice was tiger prawn dhansak and egg fried rice, with which I drank Paarl Shiraz 2021

Communal Bath

Quite early this morning we drove to Mudeford to look at the sea. The sun briefly outlined the horizon; the waves were very choppy and

determined to bubble over the wall onto the promenade. I needed to be unaccustomedly quick on my feet to keep them dry, whereas

a reflecting fisherman just paddled patiently.

As I watched the water dripping from a walker’s uplifted foot I wondered whether his dog really wanted a walk as it hopefully hugged the bollards yet would probably pick up wetter paws when circumventing each vacant bench ahead.

Sailboarding was under way –

more so in the more sheltered harbour away from the open sea. Some of these gentlemen, nevertheless couldn’t keep out of the water for long.

One came a cropper behind a capsized sailboat against which the thud of the waves syncopated with the

tinkling of the rigging of the parked sailboats

and drowned the gentler lapping of the soft sea foam frothing over the coastal pebbles.

From her car Jackie focussed on a more distant fisherman who was himself beset by spray battering rocks.

Nearer at hand she was so engrossed with a clutch of iridescent-flecked starlings that she might have missed the one perched upon her wing mirror had it not begun to shout at her.

Gulls soon moved in, one pointing out the necessity to pay for parking, and another

attempting to join in the starlings’ communal bath.

Finally she snapped her fisherman packing up.

The evening we dined on “definitely the last serving” of Jackie’s still succulent beef and mushroom pie, boiled potatoes, carrots. cauliflower and runner beans, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank The Second Fleet Lime Stone Coast Shiraz 2019.

In Their Element

Although steady rain returned this afternoon, this morning’s weather was bright and sunny, so we, wisely as it turned out, paid attention to the forecast and took a forest drive.

Tanners Lane, down which, as so often, we encountered ponies on our way to the beach has been impossible to negotiate during the tourist season. What with that and Covid we have not visited this for six months or so.

This barrier log is one means residents employ of deterring parking across their entrances or on their verges.

A solitary trio of walkers enjoyed the beach, so close to the Isle of Wight.

The incoming tide whisked foam bubbles which, like outsize frogspawn clusters, clung to floating seaweed binding the moistened rocks.

After having been dry for several months the pool outside St Leonards Grange, thanks to three days of almost continual rain, is now full again, and most of the members of the local equine tribe are back in their element enjoying weed soup, while one

favoured drier fodder on a bank beneath a spreading oak.

This evening we dined at The Lamb Inn at Nomansland, approaching which Jackie photographed me; also her main course of an excellent beef burger and mine of an equally good steak and ale pie with roasted carrots and parsnips. Each was served with a bucket of chips. Our respective desserts were perfect moist chocolate fudge cake and Bakewell tart of similar quality, each with ice cream. My wife drank Carlsberg and I drank Doom Bar.

Why We Always Talk About The Weather

The overnight gales persisted throughout this morning. We had also, once again, forgotten bottle collection day, so, driving to Milford on Sea for my medical prescription, we took the bottles to the bank in the car park, then proceeded to the coastline.

We have a phrase ‘I wasn’t born yesterday’, used to suggest ‘I’m not stupid’. Today is the one day of the year when I can legitimately claim that Jackie was born yesterday, albeit a few decades ago. She is prone to remember one morning in the 1970s when she awoke to snow on 1st June. It was therefore no surprise to her to see that road leading to The Marine restaurant, the village side of the sea wall, was covered in precipitation.

But it wasn’t snow. What we were seeing, flying across the wall, was sea foam, spume, or, as the Japanese term it, sea flowers. Interestingly, given what happened to the restaurant’s windows on Valentine’s Night last year, that the greatest concentration of fume lay on the road and the shingle directly opposite the building.

A continuation of the barrier is afforded by huge granite boulders, also covered in their fair share of sea flowers.. A staff member of the restaurant knelt to photograph a couple beset by the flying flowers that had been ripped from the shore where they quivered, just like our own plants clinging precariously to the garden soil. I wandered up to them and quipped that at least it was not rocks this time. It was, you see, rocks that another stormy sea had hurled against the windows.

Steps down to the beach, and line of shingle, as far as even the eye of the camera could see, was covered in a white shroud.

By late afternoon the wind speed had reduced to 20+ m.p.h., the skies had cleared, and the sun had emerged. Obviously we had to return to the beach. No longer was the spume covering the whole area, and the Isle of Wight was again visible.

Cohort after cohort of waves, however did pour onto the rocks, still creating flying foam which the wind send cartwheeling up the beach runway until it soared into the air.

Maybe this was the moment my sandalled feet and trouser bottoms became somewhat moistened.

The capacity to experience such a variety on one day is why we always talk about the weather.

This evening we dined on arrabbiata with some kind of tubular pasta; roasted peppers and mushrooms; and green beans, followed by pineapple sponge pudding and custard. Jackie drank Black Tower low calorie rose, whilst I finished the cabernet sauvignon.