It's not the Med, is it, Denis?

Somerset Maugham renamed Whitstable “Blackstable” in one of his first novels. He had grown up here and hated the place. I understood. Visiting the seaside in the summer is nothing like living there year-round. I remembered the sea around the British coastline as mostly mackerel gray, offset by startling blue skies in the summer. But when it rained, or threatened to rain, the grayness was omnipresent, inescapable. Although it was not raining now, the air was damp and chilly.
“June the first,” I said. “All looks a bit bleak.”
“Well, it’s not the Med, is it? This is England. Denis, you are so funny.”
As we approached the harbor area, however, the bleakness softened a bit, with hints of sunlight again piercing the dulled silver sky.

Deal us in!

In the annals of literature, Deal has not been viewed too kindly. A Regency travel book described the town as “a villainous place filled with filthy looking people.” A century or so before, the diarist Samuel Pepys called Deal “pitiful.” Well. We enjoyed our walk in a delightful part of the old town Pepys must have missed. Especially when the sun quite unexpectedly took a shine to us.
Some of the smaller streets and alleys were cobbled and the houses at least two hundred years old. With Kate in her stroller, we spent a pleasant hour zigzagging from the high street hubbub down to those quieter, more picturesque alleys and turnings, before finding ourselves back on the front looking out at the emerald-gray sea.

A yank back to Broadstairs, part 2

But it’s the rocks and the sand and the sea I adore the most. Perhaps I’m drawn to the edges of England because I can’t wait to get away from it all, and that’s why I love to plunge into the very salty, very cold, very uninviting grey green sea with lemming-like fervor. Maybe I like swimming away from the coast to gaze upon the undulating shoreline that crumbles gracefully, in part, like a giant piece of Wensleydale cheese. if only to better understand where I have come from and why I always swim back to it.

A yank back to Broadstairs, part 1

I was secretly longing to get back to the sea. I find myself drawn to the coast, and I need a connection with the ocean that pounds and tries to batter Albion into submission. I long to swim in the water or, if the weather turns inclement, to at least paddle my feet in the briny foam. For some reason I’m drawn to English seaside places, specifically Broadstairs, with its huddle of Victorian abodes clustered around the cliff top. I fondly imagine bewhiskered gents and corsetted ladies from a century ago, promenading along the front, taking in deep breaths, listening to brass bands in Cliffside Gardens, trying to escape the constraints and the conventions of their day, if only with an occasional burp or fart swallowed up in the sound of a brass cymbal or a crashing wave. I love the town’s rocky terrain, the tiny harbor, the gaudy seaside swag, its weather-beaten elegance and quiet claims to the past that always seem so warm and inviting, whatever the season.