In 1990 (or possibly 1989) we had a ‘professional development’ session at college. We had to imagine our perfect day. I was reminded of my perfect day this afternoon as I walked along Hastings’ seafront. I remember that my perfect day took place in a (unnamed) town on the coast. After breakfast over looking the sea, I stroll along the promenade on the way to my to a day at the studio. I stop at a health food shop to get something for lunch and at the florist for flowers.
I grew up a few miles inland from Southend on Sea. I was an unathletic overweight child with a fantasy that if I lived near the seafront I’d run along it every day.
Could I live here?
Would it be my perfect day?
I really like out of season seaside towns. Perhaps it was the time I spent on the seafront during my Foundation Course at Southend Tech. Perhaps I have a tendency towards the melancholy.
I feel comfortable here.
I’m staying in my bosses place – a major major perk of my part-time work in the design/gift shop. Although there’s a smart living room upstairs I’m sitting the basement kitchen. It reminds me of some of the student accommodation friends and I had in Totnes. The kitchen is dug into a steep hillside and it is therefore quite damp and musky – I wonder if it’s this that most evokes the cheap holiday-lets we rented before the tourists arrived in the south Hams.
I have to remember that the life I’m leading in London is far from normal. John has needed care of nearly four years now – since his broken ankle in January 2004. By the time the plaster came off he was limping, stumbling and falling as the result of the MND. Everyone says I’m wonderful for staying with him, especially as we only got together the year before. I’m not sure I’m so wonderful, I feel as though I never had a choice but perhaps that’s just melancholy ….
