Fragments From A Holiday

Old buoys on fraying green rope, attached to a wood and chicken-wire fence. A green shining field and beyond it the sea which I sense more than see, bleeding into the pale sky like milk mixed with ink. The sun is hot on my arms and chest and head, the breeze cool. Birdsong and the bleating of sheep. A fly buzzes past. The wind rustles the leaves of the lichen-covered sycamore with the wooden seat built around its trunk. A black crow flies across the field, cawing like a crow in a story book.

The combination of the weather - hot - the cottage - spacious, comfortable and well-equipped - the garden - full of birds and many different spots for positioning garden furniture in just the right amount of sun or shade - and the fact that Porth Ysgo with its sandy and rocky little cove, visited by almost no one, is just twenty minutes walk from the cottage - the combination of all these factors makes for a perfectly relaxing and enjoyable holiday. The air is wonderfully clear even when the sun is at its hottest. The road is lined with hawthorn, red campion, cow parsley, foxgloves, Jacob's ladder, vetch, bluebells, navel wort and many flowering grasses, which seem to be making L sneeze.

The road to Pwllelhi is a green tunnel, light just flickering dimly through the glossy leaves, like a road through the woods I was driven down every summer of my childhood.