seasidescapes

Coaches spill dusty daytrippers onto an overcast promenade where they trundle back and forth for a few hours, before climbing aboard again - a strange anoraked tide that only rises in the summer months.

Children run, armed with open arms, towards shingle-speckled young gulls, who lift and rise and scatter from the pebbles, only to settle again, a little further down the beach.

For a few weeks blue and sand is not enough, this simple view obscured by whirling waltzers. The fun fair is back in town. High tide drowned by the sound of Phil Collins.

I text to tell you the whereabouts of me and my sandwich. A yapping gull hovers level with me and my breadcrusts. Do you want that on brown or white bread? she said - considering the depth of speckles on the young gulls, hatched this year or last.

Triangles of varied sizes slide westwards like folded paper yachts pulled by the string of the horizon. And a huge yellow buoy bobs like a drowning sun.