A rainy morning and a grey, dull afternoon, but for a couple of hours in the middle of the day the sun came out.   I walked down into the village in order to photograph the “today” version of a vintage postcard of Church Street (which I will post during the week), and to secure the ingredients for a leek mornay to accompany a nice looking piece of pork from the Aberdovey butcher.  The walk down Balkan Hill is always enjoyable.

The snowdrops are beginning to go over, but many are still in bloom and other flowers are coming out on the verges.  In spite of the sun it was breezy and there was a distinct bite to the air, so it was essential to keep moving.  I didn’t go far because I had things to do in the garden, but when I noticed that the fish and chip shop was open, it was a no-brainer to go in, buy a “cone” of chips (actually in a box, but a cone-sized portion) and go and sit on one of the seats on the edge of the beach to watch the world go by.

The nice lady in the fish and chip shop agreed that it is simply wonderful to get even a morsel of sunshine after all the wind and rain, and she gave my chips the serious drenching of vinegar that I requested.  The fish and chip shop, by the way, is now open from 12 noon to 8pm every day except Wednesdays, which is fantastic.  I could never remember when they were open during the winter, but I now look forward to sampling their fish as well as their chips.

The benches on which I was sitting with my chips were a testament to the recent storms and high winds, half buried in sand, their legs vanished.  Two seagulls and a jackdaw did their best to hypnotise me, but I resisted, as they become serious pests during the tourist season.  The chips were divine, reminding me vividly of standing in the queue for the Thames Clipper, the river bus, with an actual cone of chips after a frequent trip to the cinema in Greenwich.  Bizarrely, the sand in my chips also reminded me of crossing the Western Desert of Egypt to the Libyan border;  Everything you eat out there has sand in it, no matter how carefully one packs the food, and it grates on one’s teeth.  The state of mummified ancient Egyptian teeth, having chewed endless loaves of ancient Egyptian bread liberally mixed, albeit unintentionally, with abrasive desert sand is something to behold.  A study of 3000 mummies by the University of Zurich showed that 18 percent of all mummies in case reports showed “a nightmare array” of dental diseases.  Trivia for the day 🙂

A number of shops were open along the front, and it was very cheering to see the village coming back to life.  The Sweet Shop was open, but sadly after all those chips I had no room for a salted caramel ice cream!  I stopped to watch the silvery water of the estuary and the seagulls at the water’s edge instead, before trudging back up the hill to experiment with my new chainsaw.