August 1995

Sunlight gives skin cancer. If so Walberswick beach is a frightful place, blazing. This morning we are in a state of contention. So I run for it, alone to Westhall, where it takes an hour or two to wipe the mind, but it happens, it happens. The church is locked, but the middle cottage has its doors open, and a young woman sitting inside, and the key on a peg. I give it back to a smiling, bearded man, who whistles brief snatches of tune. Which I hear again at intervals all day... since I stay there till five o'clock. No one comes, and the cottage opposite is empty, though the front fence is newly creosoted, bubbling and smelling and shining. As I roll down the lane through the shadows, I pick up, at a distance, the scent of the lime, and I park with it trailing its twigs down to the car roof. A slight wind ruffles things, but I can hear the hum of flies and bees, and there they are, outlined against the blue-white undersides of the leaves, inside the tents of hanging branches: humble bees, hive bees and many, many flies. No bees searching in the grass yet though. Later in the afternoon I see one doing that. Once I have returned the key, and have the south door unbolted, I stand and watch the chickens over the fence. They have just been fed. There is a cabbage stump being ...