I DID GO DOWN TO THE SEA AGAIN…

It was the first time since the day before Christmas Eve, and I felt my heart lift even though we went the slightly longer route rather than go through the woodlands, which are currently even more muddy than my patio and path, which takes some doing.

I never, ever want to forget how lucky I am to live in such a beautiful place and meet and know so many nice people. I don’t ever want to take it for granted when I get my first sight of the ‘proper’ sea. Technically, I know that Poole Park Lagoon is part of the sea, and separated by the sluice gates, but the Harbour and the Hills and Brownsea Island, which you’ll know as Kirrin Island if you’ve ever read Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, is the real deal.

We got a good look at the sluice and the new safe cover to it, which means dogs won’t get sucked in when owners ignore the signs. Thankfully, they very rarely died, but folks, always remember, the sea is not your friend, no matter how friendly it looked today. As you can see, It was beautifully smooth and the mist hung over the Purbeck Hills so it was the sort of day that the smugglers would have loved. Or bad guys, come to that, so I was happily storing details for a future Lucy Williams and tying them back in to World War Two for Esther and the Professor.

I’ve just finished the first draft of the one for 2027, which is provisionally going to be called A Friendly Invasion, and I’ve had a lot of fun and will have more fun researching the impact the Americans had on Poole; and the impact that Poole had on the Americans, because it’s the sort of place that does change you. Not the modern part, but the heritage area where I live, and the Old Town and the Harbour simply are different. You find yourself slowing down and talking to people.

I’m going to go back to my garden for a bit, because a wonderfully, Poole thing happened yesterday. I had two big projects which I was expecting to take me the best part of a month of my laughingly called spare time. I asked my beloved husband to tell me the best way to lift some bricks because I wanted to move them to another part of the garden. The wonderful man, not only did it for me while I shifted them, but he did it so much faster than I could, which strikes me as a sign of true love because he was sneezing for the rest of the afternoon courtesy of his immunotherapy-enhanced allergies.

I was talking to him about how I wanted to stabilise my little plastic greenhouse when a voice came from the bottom of the garden. “I hope you don’t mind me overhearing, but you don’t want to do it like that. You want to use those bricks there.”

I eagerly asked ‘How’ because what I’d been planning was a lot of work and meant buying things rather than reusing them, which I don’t like doing because it means less money for plants. He said it’d be easier to show me, and then came in and did that. He’s a ‘proper’ gardener, and he had us organised in two shakes of a lamb's tail, so I now have the most stable plastic greenhouse that you’re ever likely to see. The shelves are a brick width smaller on either side, but I can pop small plantpots on them so it doesn’t matter. The wind got up last night, and it didn’t so much as move.

So that’s what it’s like in my world, and why I write about it. I escaped here forty years ago after a childhood travelling, and now it’s home, and I love it and love sharing it with my friends I haven’t met yet. Right now, I’m making progress in my garden and organising all my broken or cracked plantpots into batches to go with the dustmen every fortnight rather than making the car all muddy and going to the dump. I sweep up the mud. Then I sweep up some more mud. Then it rains and guess what?

And someday my parcels will come. Till then, Teum are refunding me a lot of £4-00’s so I can extend my gardening plans. Next stop is the bird feeding station in the front garden, which’ll be fun and out of the way of the cats. Who knows, maybe the components will be here when we speak again on Tuesday? Till then, there are pictures of the harbour on a beautiful day and an increasingly beautiful garden to celebrate those forty years of marriage. Have fun and if you’ve got a spare moment, see if you can find the two turnstones in this last picture. I promise you they’re there…

spot the birdies!