Across the pond

Although it is my seventy-fourth, this is the first birthday I have spent by the sea. So I am determined to make the most of it. The electronic barometer shows a picture of the sun but I fear the reading is more influenced by the central heating than the weather. Outside the sky is an unrelenting grey. I can just make out the outline of Portland Bill. On the other side the wreck of the Ice Princess lies on the ocean floor. It sank a few days ago in a 90 mph gale.

Today, the wind is brisk but nothing like gale force. And there were only a few specks of rain in the air as we set out on the muddy coastal path to walk down to the sea front. The Golden Cap was clearly visible but its colour was almost as black as the original Model T Ford. When we got down to the Charmouth sea front the waves  were splashing the one hundred yard promenade, so, unsurprisingly, there were no promenaders. The car park was scattered with pebbles thrown in by last night’s tide. The River Char was swollen by the rains of the last few days and by the incoming tide. The swans had retreated to a quieter pool, created in a nearby pool. On a dry in summer you can jump across it at low tide. But today you would have had to swim.

The footbridge was still above the water level and as we crossed it a cormorant spread its wings and gave us a demonstration of the best way to travel in weather like this. And it flies with grace and beauty. Nothing Boeing has produced can compete. Only the Concorde got near to matching it. And given its fuel consumption we are unlikely ever to see another plane like it.

My brother rang from Birmingham and was able to listen to the waves crashing over the rocks. Walking back through the village I saw a sign I had not noticed before, indicating that I was on the 615 mile route that Charles II took when he was fleeing from the Roundhead troops. Which reminded me that one of his first stops on that journey was in Mosely Old Hall, less than a mile from the house in which I was born in Fordhouses, Wolverhampton.

Back in the house I opened my presents which included a copy of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex Tales and a collection of his poetry. I quote one of the shorter ones, entitled ‘Epitaph on a Pessimist’.

I’m Smith of Stoke, aged sixty-odd,

I’ve lived without a dame

From youth-time on; and would to God

My dad had done the same.

Hardy could have told Stephen Fry a thing or two about manic depression. I wonder how his life would have worked out if he had been born in our time. Would he have accepted the bi-polar label and gone on the pills? And if he had done so, would he have written Tess of the d’Urbervilles and all that poetry? Answers please from psychiartrists, poets and anyone who feels that the bleakness of  Egdon Heath is an apt metaphor for depression.