Odds and Ends

The ocean dressed in grey today. I was out fairly early walking the dog and we ventured onto the sand so that he could dig, roll around and coat his nose. Quite the fool but the enormous grin and beating tail drew answering smiles from passers by.

We’d taken a trip further south the previous day with my brother and his family to Huntington Beach where we used to live. It struck all of us that the tone of this beach town is relaxed and easy going - throwing its  showier relative up the road into higher relief somehow.  As we enjoyed a carefree hour on Dog Beach the sun flirted with us and during the drive back the water’s palette was iridescent in hues of light green and blue. I was awestruck.

As we’ve been happily busy with family visits these past weeks I’ve been snatching moments here and there to read. I finished Nine Coaches Waiting and the promised review will appear in tandem with a quieter period. I’m now back in the realm of Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley and, as with my reading of Villette, I’m captivated by the descriptive lyricism and powerful character observation, deeply sensitive and sharply caustic by turn, of this remarkable author. 

We travel to New York next month and I’m beginning  to anticipate walking in the shadow of the concrete giants again. I’ve just discovered a lovely blog evocatively named Ephemeral New York ‘chronicling an ever changing city through faded and forgotten artefacts’. It’s an absolute treasure trove for anyone who’s interested in the history of this heart stealing city, with its exploration of the layers of the past lying just beneath, or in some cases alongside the present. As I drove alongside the water to Malibu this afternoon it occurred to me that while here in Los Angeles the ocean lies inscrutable in its vast and seemingly constant essence there in the Big Apple the frenetic pace of change, reinvention and novelty sweeps you up in its reckless wake. No possibility of losing time in Gotham.