Labour saving paddling…

After all, why should you go across the beach and paddle when you can stand on the path a metre or so above and the sea will come up to you and wash your face at the same time.

That was Monday morning and a total change from a hot weekend. The wind was gusting 38-40mph, the ferry boat was going up and down as it travelled to Brownsea in a way that seemed to be putting off the tourists. We didn’t do all of our usual walk because it was heading towards the next high tide and it was going to be higher than usual because it’s a spring tide. I’m sure a salt water shower is very invigorating, but it won’t surprise you that there weren’t many dog walkers about and none of them were small ones.

Seriously, you have to be sensible if you live near water, and that sometimes means saying ‘no, not today.’ Our friends the starlings were pleased to see us though, and they brought their friends the sparrows with them. They were eyeing the tub of meal worm and suet coated mealworm very thoughtfully when my daughter put it down so she could take pictures and edging closer and closer and closer…

The one with the wonky foot came closest of all because we’re softies in my family, so he gets a bit extra. I have a suspicion that the flock get him to lead the advance party, so we say ‘oh you poor little birdie’ and they get more to eat. Which is a lot better than chucking him out of the chattering, which is what you call a group of starlings on the ground. When they’re in the air, they’re a murmuration and they leave the Red Arrows standing every time. When they’re sitting outside a cafe studying a menu, they’re called a sneaky group who know how to be Insta-friendly…

Apparently, the collective noun for a group of writers is a worship. I wouldn’t go anything like that far, but I will tell you about my special offers for this week, at 99p in the UK and 99c in the US.

This week, they’re all four of my Esther and the Professor World War Two series, and the fifth is well under way. Esther is a World War Two housewife, mother to two children, living with her parents and working at a top secret Bureau on what was then known as Parkstone on Sea and is now known as Sandbanks. If you’re a journalist, then it seems to be compulsory to call it a millionaire’s playground, but back then it was on the line of flight back to Fench airports in occupied Cherbourg so the Nazi’s tended to drop their bombs there to lighten the load. You wouldn’t have thought the government would put top secret establishments on the third likeliest site for an invasion, would you? But they did.

All this is true, and Esther, who also drives a WVS van was inspired by the redoubtable ladies whose oral histories I took as par of an oral history, and my lovely long-dead next door neighbour who told my daughter all about being a little girl her age when she saw a bomber come over the house in flames and then crash on the other side of Longfleet Road. She also participated in the bucket chain to save the then Cornelia House Hospital when it was firebombed. You can still see the traces of that in the cracks in walls, and it puts what we go through today very much into proportion.

Anyway, Esther works for the irascible Professor James Lomax who resents not being able to fight because of TB,. He’s determined to find a way to serve and since his cousin is a spy and bomb disposal officer it’s pretty much inevitable that Esther ends up fighting her own war.

Those four are A Very Private War, A Very personal invasion, A very different kind of war,A Very different Kind of War, and a Darker Kind of War I was thinking about them today as I looked at the sort of gray sea and sky that’d make it easy for a bomber to hide before it unleashed havoc.

Feeling very grateful and lucky now… and hope you have plenty to be grateful for and I’ll see you on Sunday.