high tide, mid afternoon

It's 8 degrees Celsius outside and the sun has brought out la tourista in droves.  I took the bumper collection of bottles to the tip this morning - believe me it was an embarrassing amount.  I filled the boot of our car with 3 boxes and 6 bags of bottles.  I haven't actually been to the tip since at least two weeks before Christmas - we seemed to use a lot of Olive Oil and Marmalade over the past few weeks.  Honestly.  Okay, it was a rather fine collection of Sunday Times Wine Club and St Peter's bottles (they always seem too nice to throw away).  Anyway, as I drove along by the sea front at the bottom of our road, I was taken aback by the amount of cars parked there.

It was like a fine Spring morning.  The first decent few rays of sunshine for ages so presumably most of Ipswich decided to come and spend the day walking up and down the prom before diving into The Fludyers (pronounced "Flujjers") for some braised guinea fowl and chips or whatever they're offering on their menu this year.  Still, all good for the town's economy, I suppose. Actually, I had some rather fine fish and chips there a few weeks ago.  A great lunchtime pub but it's a bit like one of those Edward Hopper Diner paintings at night. It's the double-fronted red brick building behind the lamp-post.  Behind that is where Mrs Simpson waited for Edward VIII to abdicate.  In front of it there's a small tea room called, unsurprisingly enough Simpson's.  Perhaps the teetotal tourists are in there gulping tea and eating bits of quiche and salad leaf.  That's what we used to be served up with when I used to go to NUT meetings there.  Terribly twee.

This rather fine postcard from probably the 1950s shows that most of this sleepy seaside town has hardly changed since the middle of last Century. However, as you can see from this morning's photo, the skyline has changed radically!  The Docks throw out so much light pollution at night that in certain parts of the town it's difficult to stargaze. The unusual concrete object in my photo is a seat. Not many people sit on it though. They probably can't work out how to.  The wooden timeshare untis that are ubiquitous on the Suffolk Coast are sometimes a target for the hordes of bored rampaging teenagers when they need to warm themselves up of an evening.  Talking of fires, I've got the stove happily burning the logs I chopped up this morning.  Despite the temperature outside, I still feel the need to burn some wood.

Actually, I've realised this is probably all a bit pointless and I should really be doing something useful.  Task avoidance.  I suppose I'd better go and make dinner soon.  And I need to put some more music on.  The new Imagined Village cd is good - less big names and none of that clattery hip hop/drum'n'bass rhythm section that gets on your (my) nerves after about 2 seconds - sorry but when I downloaded the first one onto my iPod, I had to delete the Tam Lin track by Benjamin Zephania.  Nothing against Ben but its about 8 minutes long and I know I'll just forward it everytime it comes on.  There's still lots of sitars on the new one.