Later:
Cloudy, some rain today. Packed and assembled
everyone to pick up Robert and Ralph Tidmarsh at school, home by 1 or so, just
after Agassi beat McEnroe. We left the
house at 13:45 and arrived at Lyme Regis at 18:25, under dry but cloudy skies. Walked about the town a bit, steep streets,
seagulls loud cries, quite charming.
Dinner nothing great. No 4th July
celebration.
Sunday,
5 July. St. Michael's Hotel, Lyme Regis,
Dorset, England. 11 o'clock mass with
the bishop ("Me, your unworthy servant.") at Sts. George and Michael after
8 a.m. breakfast (lovely waitress, slow talking, seemed a bit dour, but very
pleasant). We leave Cathy to watch
Agassi vs. Ivanisivech from Croatia (Steph. Graf beat Monica Seles the day
before as we listened on the radio on the way down in the car.) and go to Seaton,
a nice beach; clean but all rocks down to the top of high tide, perhaps even
further to mean tide. Tide goes out
about 20 feet while we are there, a cloudy, breezy day with occasional bright
spots which disappeared finally after about 3:30. The children all get wet, but mostly just
play in the sand and water. Thomas gets
dressed again, but after he warms, he wants to get back in. I don't let him. He walks as close as he can to the water! Two rocks (Mara/Thomas) are taken as souvenirs.
Our
latest lines are from Thomas: "My teacher says . . . ", e.g., not to
waste water, to share, or something he wants to do/his latest thoughts on a
subject!
We
leave the beach at about 5:30, fried chicken and chips for everyone (burgers
for lunch), except Jeffrey, another burger.
I
take a bath when we return, still hooked on A
Woman in White.
Afterwards,
Cathy and I walk two doors down the street to the hotel Alexandra. It reminds me of the La Valencia in La
Jolla. Cathy has the quail, which was
recommended and I have veal (a la carte).
Lot of people are here for a real summer dinner! (7:30 seating.) We are about the last to leave and retire to
the lounge for coffee and drinks (single malt for me). It is quite nice sitting above the
"Cobb," still light outside until late, clearing blue skies, but cold
tradewinds.
Sunday
morning: It is a cloudy, breezy day with
some patches of sunshine, we are up above the "Cobb" in Room 3, St.
Michael's Hotel. (The Catholic Church is
St. George and St. Michael.) The flowers
are brilliant , especially on our balcony: reddish, pink impatiens, purple and
white petunias, bright orange, yellow and red begonias, and hot pink and white
petunias.
We
have now been in England a year!
Wimbledon is set to conclude today.
Steffi Graf won the women's singles yesterday, Agassi vs. Ivanisivech
today for men's. We must have arrived in
the midst of this last year, but, missing the hype, did not pay it much
attention. I do remember watching
England vs. West Indies in cricket, and England not doing that well. (They would salvage respect in August.) This year the Test is against Pakistan and
already England has fared poorly. This
weekend is the third match, and England has lost twice already (including the
exciting one we saw at Lord's). Now, at
Old Trafford, Pakistan has scored 509 or something like that and finally
declared.
1:50
p.m. Seaton, Devon. The day is cloudy, not too cold, but
breezy. The water is calm, shore
breakers, row of sand by the ocean on a beach which is almost as wide, perhaps
a little wider than Del Mar, and all rocks!
There are cliffs to our left and to our right, where the land juts out
forming a small bay within the larger bay.
The children are split, Robert and Mara have their shirts still on,
Thomas and Jeffrey have theirs off. The
beach is as deserted as it might be in early May: two children next to us
playing in the sand and water, another cluster 150 meters west, another group
30 meters east.
I
see blue sky out over the water, but a dark cloud behind me. The cliffs are white, but also red, covered
in fields on top, marked off by nice hedges.
To the left the beach looks, the way the land shapes, almost as it would
look looking south from Zuma or perhaps south from Del Mar. (Are there similarities
between those two places? I never
thought of that before! Cliffs are not
quite as high in Del Mar, higher in Zuma.)
Nobody
is really getting wet; legs and shorts, but not too much above the waist. This must be the real English summer!
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