Ocean View

I have been back up north, to Newcastle where we lived for fifteen years, to Darras Hall where I was a primary teacher and Whitley Bay where my children went through secondary school, where they played in orchestras and rock bands.  I stopped overnight in Cullercoats with my friend Carol Alevroyianni who has scraped together her savings to buy an old terraced house facing onto the North Sea.  This is the view from her window.  When you pass through the airlock of her three front doors, you step out into the bracing British world of holiday and health.  Dog walkers, joggers and cyclists pass in a continuous stream along the Victorian promenade.  Steam ships crawl along the horizon.

It was good to see my friend again, in off duty mode, and talk about how our children have grown into free spirited adults, how our own careers have developed and how we have both moved from marriage to independence. We played in a Samba band together, she was Director of the three day international music festival that for many years graced the North Shields Fish Quay. She left North Tyneside Council to become a regional Creative Partnerships Director. Recently she has been working free-lance for Channel 4 television. My own life developed in reverse taking me from the arts through schools to work as an education consultant for Sheffield City Council.

Leaning over the railings the following morning, gazing out to sea I wondered, as many have done before me, what our struggle is all about. The huge expanse of rolling sea remains superficially unchanged, the sky as vast and the winter wind seems as bitterly cold as when I first came here with Keith one weekend when our children were tiny.

We have been through good times and bad, our little family has grown-up and moved away, but the waves still roll in, relentlessly pounding the cliffs, wearing them away. Behind the grey clouds, the sun still shines. But the seasons are out of kilter.

It is enough that I can stop now and take the time to look at this awesome natural world and murmer thanks that I have been so lucky to pass this way.  It will be an even greater good fortune if one day my tiny grandchild grows and thrives in a safe world so that her children too have the opportunity to enjoy the view, play in the sand and paddle at the edge of the ocean.