Skip to main content

Early Morning Pier

The pier stood in the sea and let its legs get wet. 

It stared out at the dirty ocean and wondered when the sun would show its face.  It had been a cold night and the sky had been laid bare without a blanket of cloud to protect it.  The moon began its slow descent out of its comfy chair and lumbered off to its bed while the sun hid beyond the horizon and thought about climbing the ladder to his deck chair.  For a few moments the pier stood alone considering the day ahead.
At least the pier thought it was alone...underneath its dripping beams and supports a huddled figure lay blinking under a ragged beach-towel.  What had once been techni-coloured stripes were now mere suggestions of a beach holiday in the sun and ice cream cones from singing vans.  This towel seemed to have soaked up the memories and the good old holidays and forgotten them over the years, discarding them among the pebbles and shells that made up the shore line.  Its final memory was wrapped around a small girl who should’ve been tucked up in bed, not surrounded by harsh cold pebbles and an unaware pier.
She lay blinking at the empty beach and remembered that today was another day on her own wrapped up in the final thoughts of her abandonment.  Cold legs, numb feet, painful toes cramped into 3 pairs of socks and white Adidas trainers.  A lack of breakfast was nothing new and she sat staring out at the sea contemplating her day ahead.
 Pier and girl sat amongst pebbles and dead starfish. 
The sun trundled towards his deck chair and the day dawned.

(Photo by me, 2008)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Slackness

I've been so slack.  Slacker than a pair of middle aged pants around the ankles of a slack jawed tight rope walker.  I've been writing a few pages here and there and thinking many writery thoughts in my head.  But it feels as though I haven't been doing enough and this is my eternal problem. So here I am writing something tangible and bankable and making you read it because it will make me feel as though I've actually done something with my day.  As opposed to all the stuff I really have done with my day which is very impressive actually I'll have you know. It's just not in the general theme of writing or anything I might enjoy doing.  And in other news it's been a stunning day in London town.  Almost makes me happy to be here. Almost.

Moving Goalposts

Some days you can feel as though you're on top of everything and it all makes completes sense.  The goalposts to a job being completed are clearly signposted and you can tick them off as you progress. Other days you can feel as though you're sinking and no matter how many goals you tick off a few more appear on the horizon and nobody warned you they'd be there. I set myself goals and these are added to what everyone else has decided I need to do.  So they multiply and the list gets longer and falls off one page onto two and suddenly you're staring at a tunnel of objectives and no light to shine on them for clarity. It's deeply frustrating and I'm the sort of person who needs set targets to reach.  If you change the targets it's like you've personally attacked me and ruined my day for fun.  I know that's not what actually happens but it definitely feels personal sometimes. I have 2 new pieces of work to hand in on Monday that weren't menti...

Big Days

I'm in the middle of planning my best friend's Hen night and it's got me thinking about how many days of my life I can actually remember.  Odd I know.  I don't remember the majority of the hen that she threw for me as I rather predictably drank too much and was very ill by the end of it.  But until the drink flowed we had the best day ever running round Brighton in teams on a scavenger hunt, eating fish and chips by the seafront and generally catching up with my best friends in the whole World (apart from 1 who had to be in San Fran for silly work but I did think about her while I was dashing down side streets laughing all the way).  I also don't remember most of my actual Wedding day.  Snippets of emotions, the man looking at me as we exchanged vows and shock at the whole thing actually happening.  Before the day took off, my most amazing Bridesmaid had to stitch ribbon onto velcro that had arrived with the flowers,...