High Tide05:37 (2.30m)
Low Tide12:21 (0.90m)
High Tide19:05 (2.20m

Sea temperature: 12.8
Sea conditions: good
Weather: cold, for the first time
Joined by: The LE, Sara and The Poet.
Topics of conversation: The storm, the fire, it's biblical, and now there's a whale: Humpback spotted of East Coast
There was a really nasty house fire on the other side of the river on Sunday evening, we'd met There Pirate on the beach on our evening walk and then walked north and as we'd done so there had been a fireball, followed by flames and small explosions, or flashes, as the studio of an artist couple had taken light. It spread dramatically and the house has been seriously damaged. The fire engines arrived very quickly but it was the day of the high winds so they had a battle on their hands.
There have been power cuts in the area, as a result of the storm, and some neighbouring villages and towns are still partially without power and wifi. The Architect has been WFH and Sara's sister and brother-in-law have a smallholding which has been without for more than 24 hrs and it's is hard for them with many living creatures needing attention and no power. We discussed the way in which current life is reliant upon power and how difficult it is, or seems, to get by without these days. Sara and I looked at it differently - I see it as a relief to be detached from the real world occasionally and we mulled over individual importance. Once, in the days when I thought I was important and was working in live television, the main power supply to the TV station was severed by a construction worker building the neighbouring shopping mall, he was fine, but the station ground to an instant halt and panic ensued. We all ran about trying to get the outside broadcast units, that were parked in the car park, fired up so that they could power transmission and huge umbilical chords of power were dragged through the corridors in a frenzy.  I was stabbing wildly at a dead telephone, feeling uncomfortably out of control, shouting "somebody do SOMETHING!" as if our lives depended on it, when our laid back and level headed Production Manager sauntered in and said "It's only telly, no one's going to die..." This stuck with me, in fact he rewired me instantly and this sense of insignificance is not unpleasant, more liberating. If you not a parent no one relies on you, I'm not an A&E doctor, nurse or emergency services driver, Fireman etc. and when Sara asked what I would do if I had something really important to do and the power was off, well...I don't. Friends and I communicate regularly by email and text, but if we can't we don't panic, we know we are still there. The fact that our methods of communication have increased beyond any previous generation's means that we have the ability to be constantly switched on to some connection powered by the national grid or signal masts, but we don't have to be. There's a short article in The Sunday Times about the general panic that teenagers are sexting more and more but actually that's all they are doing, and that teenage pregnancy is at the lowest it's been since records began, good thing? Bad thing? Katie Glass says "I watch my twentysomething brother obsess over his friends' lives on Facebook. Go out and s**g someone, I tell him. He looks horrified."
One thing that is certainly 'good' is that the recent unseasonal warm weather has meant there is a glut of lobster locally and one restaurant is taking advantage of this and running  their second lobster night. But of course they are without power so no one can book...!