By the sea...

Qu'est-ce qu'il fait beau aujourd'hui! And indeed it was. Here we are mid February and it is blazing sunshine and (reasonably) warm weather. This demanded a trip to the sea side - and that is what happened.

So, enough of stuffy Hull and on the bus to Withernsea - the name I think a contraction of Wither on Sea. Anyway. It's that bit where the wet bit meets the dry bit - and they sell ice-cream and fish and chips. What more do you want?

And despite - or perhaps because - a resort on the English coast is no longer fashionable, it was so beautiful. With the cliffs, the sand and the sea. The sand and the sea are pretty much standard, but the thing which stands out about this part of the coast is the nature of the cliffs. As you are walking along the beach - and I was walking a la Sandy Shore / Shaw - you hear and see the land crumbling away into the sea.

The cliffs are made out of something that is halfway between rock and mud. Bringing my massive knowledge of geology into play (as gleaned from in-depth research of bits of TV programs), the cliffs are made of the sediment and rocks which were dropped from the melting glaciers at the end of the ice age. Little by little the land is being returned - or properly said moved once again. The bit of land that was once Scotland or Scandinavia will soon resurface as a mud-bank off Lincolnshire. Nothing's wasted in nature. Not even waste.

On another - totally unconnected point - it is weird how signs use a form of English which no-one ever uses: Warning: anyone scaling these walls does so at their own risk it said on the flat roof of a house. Passengers must not alight while the bus is in motion it said on the bus. I've not knowingly scaled anything - ever - and as for alighting I'm not even sure how it is done. The world is changing, but the makers of signs don't seem to realise. Two boys were talking on the bus on the way there: It's near that thing, he said - not knowing the word to describe the object he was pointing at. Then it came to him after a while: The church. Only a generation ago religion was central to the culture: now it is something forgotten. It is interesting - and disturbing - to compare this with those killing themselves in the name (but not the spirit) of their religions today.

Hey, ho. Deep philosophy. Sometimes it happens. Philosophy that is. It was a good day today. It is easy to forget what a beautiful country / world this is. I think that you need to have two goes at life: once to live it - and the second to appreciate it.

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