Sunday 12 February 2012


High Tide00:57 (2.70m)
Low Tide07:21 (0.40m)
High Tide13:30 (2.40m)
Low Tide19:18 (0.70m)
Sea temperature: 1.5 (although the first temperature registered was 0.4)
Sea conditions: calm, no waves and very low tide
Weather: a light dusting of snow everywhere, cold breeze, grey and heavy cloud threatening more snow
Joined by: My intrepid friend
Topics of conversation:
My intrepid friend, having thawed out her gear box and made it over, walked down with me and we met up with The Shaman and her family on our way to the beach. They were planning to make use of the low tide and snow to do some geometric sand drawing, think crop circles on the beach. The group included 2 under the age of 5, their dad (an artist) and a Russian student who is studying with The Shaman at the Princes' College and they were armed with sticks and string and lots of layers. We all met up and paused on our way across the estuary as skein upon skein of geese flew overhead. The Shaman's online name is Nannagoose, so I think the small people were especially delighted to see them. The dogs nearly ruined their canvas as the flat sand spread out in front of them but actually they were keen to get back into the dunes, where the smell of rabbits hung over the frozen earth.
Sand circle group



Intrepid Friend being intrepid
Not a very good shot of the results

Snow dunes had now become hazardous as we made our way along the top ridge of the shingle. The snow had banked up, frozen, formed a solid crust and then been covered in sand, but now it was covered in another layer of snow and we couldn't see what we were stepping on. Sometimes we marched through soft sand that looked like snow, other times we found ourselves perched precariously on top of frozen crusts which gave way as we tried to move. Our feet would sink through and our legs would be almost knee deep. Not quite as risky as my walk to Norway last April across the frozen lake when the hard crust gave way to a couple of feet of snow below but about as unusually precarious as a Suffolk beach walk can get, where's a Viking when you really need one?

We met up with DK and Mabel, who was very pleased to see us, and my Intrepid Friend and I filled him in on our evening's excursion last night, even though we are still struggling to find the words. In the programme it was described as:

Faster Than Sound: I Burn for You
After Dracula by Bram Stoker
‘I Burn for You’ is an atmospheric new music theatre work inspired by Bram Stoker’s legendary vampire novel Dracula, created by composer Ian Wilson and stage director Tom Creed.
It brings together an astonishing line up of performers including the Hungarian death metal vocalist Attila Csihar (Mayhem, Sunn O))), and Void of Voices) – whose remarkable voice has been described as operatic – in the vampyric role.
He is joined by virtuosic vocal improvisers Phil Minton and Elaine Mitchener and acclaimed musicians including saxophonist Cathal Roche, accordionist Clive Bell and electro-acoustic improviser David Toop.
Now I'm a bit af a Bram Stoker expert, hence the interest, I've probably read the book 4 times and have a velum bound copy with wood-cut illustrations so I'm a hard audience to please, but I don't think any of the audience can really have been pleased by the 50 minutes we experienced. It was so laughingly bad that the two of us dare not even make eye contact for fear of loosing it altogether. I'm intrigued to read any reviews following the performance as we tried to work out who they were aiming at and ended up thinking it was probably purely for their own pleasure. Attila Csihar has a voice made from rocks and razor blades and had the show not revolved around various other improvised voices and strange little men playing hollowed out sticks and creating sound effects from bowls of twigs, he probably could have held the audience in the palm of his hand. One woman in front of us actually put her hands over her ears and eyes in terror as he clambered onto a table and began to growl. He was wearing quite nice boots too.
Attila Csihar

Attila Csihar in the snow

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