From the South Coast

Slight trauma today when I went to use the camera on my phone and found it wasn't working - just a black screen. And the phone was eating up battery, and was hot all the time. 

Fortunately I also had my "old camera" in the bag and took photos of the wonderful white cliffs with birds nesting in the cracks, and the shadows of seagulls, soaring in the blue blue sky, undulating over the chalky verticality ... but as I'm not at my own home I don't have my laptop with its photo-processing capability. 

We'll just have to make do with fewer photos for a while.

The walk under the cliffs took me westward into Brighton, where the beach was densely populated in parts. 

 I walked down to the water's edge, took off my espadrilles, and limped into the shallow water ... quite cold! ... then had an agonising walk back up to the dry part of the shingle to let the feet dry and put the shoes back on. How lovely to have shoes on for the rest of the walk over those hard stones.

And how lovely to leave all that heaving humanity and the fried-food smells and the  noise of traffic and be back, up the hill, in the quiet of bungalow-land, sitting in the garden reading and communing with the cat.

Who - was it the heat? - didn't seem to have much appetite, and is staying out very late tonight. There are suspicions he's being fed elsewhere. The cat-flap is open, but I won't sleep well without the cat safely inside the house.

Going out at intervals to call him showed more and more stars, a wonderful sight that we miss in London's urban glow.

As for the problems with phone camera - if it happens to you, turn it off and turn it on again - it worked for me.