"Oh, the water..."

Who knows why, but lately we've been getting ragged and jagged, a kind of emotional entropy that can start to happen: defensive, jumping down each other's throats,stuck in a feedback loop of perceived anger and consequent anger.

Even agreeing to go for a walk at the Easter weekend seemed to be a difficult matter, but go we did, to a lake near the mouth of the Gouessant, first dammed by order of a Duke of Brittany in the 13th century, to bring power to his mills. We snapped and bickered a little and blamed the dog as we set out from the car, but slowly, as we made our way around, the sun on the water, the reflected trees, the gathering glow and warmth of the morning, all began to work in us, and as we completed the circuit of the lake, we realised we were calm and cheerful.



I haven't many pictures; taking photos I find is a solitary pleasure, Molly's company excepted. She's got the hang of it now, and seems to understand that it's rather like a good smell is for her, something that can't be rushed, and we've a reciprocal arrangement where each of us waits at the end of the lead or a bend in the path for what we consider to be a reasonable time while the other indulges themselves in sniffing or snapping.

( See these balloons? They've crossed the Channel - Harvey's half-price sale, they announce desperately in English, but where, when? Their helium exhausted, they flutter impotently, their message meaningless, in a French rockpool, surely a metaphor for something...)

We drove out to the bay for lunch, sandwiches of salmon rillettes (posh fish paste) and cucumber, thermos flavour coffee and fruit-and nut-chocolate which we ate in the car in the little cliff-top car park, where there were perhaps two or three other vehicles. As we ate we watched the waves, wrinkling and crested running forever, from right to left over the silvery surface below, little by little drawing away in the great tidal reach this bay is known for. And the spell of the water continued to work; we spoke, of memories and fears and I don't recall what else, and much more we listened, to each other and to ourselves, our voices pitched low and even in the small space of the car, deafness was forgotten and anger ebbed away with the tide.

There was plenty of time; time in the afternoon to work in the garden and not waste the opportunity of the weather there either, time to go for drinks later, (a potential source of tension that no longer was, I babbled inconsequentially like a stream in a concrete pipe, and sang for my glass of Bordeaux and everyone was happy, I think, myself included...), time for Tom to take out a book and read,

while Moll and the camera and I went down to the beach, to walk on the rippled sand and round and round the rugged rocks like ragged rascals.

A holiday weekend, a sunny day and a clean beach and scarce another soul in sight, save for a couple of cockle diggers, with a big fork and a bucket and wellingtons. The big stretch of golden sand and pretty blue sea and jolly bars, one or two of which might even be open, at Val Andre just up the coast would begin to fill up by about 3, but here is all grey-blue and bronze and wide estuary and green cliffs with yellow wallflowers , and people don't bother much. The camera batteries failed and the spares were in the case in the car, but I took a few, and it didn't matter too much. We were there anyway.