The Breakwater

The Breakwater is a long rocky wall that stretches across from the bottom end of Commercial Street across to Long Point. Yesterday she went for a walk across there - it's a great adventure... she checks the tides and then heads down there when the time is right; walks across the wall and then onto the other side. The last few times she's done it, it's been the other end of winter - with the town quiet and only the most foolhardy aliens making the treck across the slippery rocks.

This weekend was the first one of spring... and Sunday was warm. That's relative of course. It was 52 degrees F. That's about 11 or 12 degrees Celcius. Mmmmmm Toasty!!!

The trouble was, she turns into a bit of a loner when she's here and going walkies. Basically it's just her and the quiet. Clean air, bird song... the sound of her own breath. And me, of course. But I'm quiet most of the time. It's these ceramic vocal chords. And on Sunday, being so toasty, there were other people out walking and a few of them were on the breakwater. Mostly quiet but one couple came along and the guy was yelling and laughing... filling up the silence with what even she described as inane noise. At first Miriam thought he was laughing at her because she leaps from rock to rock with her hands out for balance and it seemed that the guy was imitating the way she did that. And you know how she is. Sometimes she just speaks when she shouldn't. She stopped and let him catch up and said how glad she was that she had managed to amuse him. She had that particularly sarcastic tone of voice that we all love so much.

"Oh, no," he said "I wasn't laughing at you! I was laughing at my wife. She's scared of heights and I was laughing at how she's walkin' with her arms out for balance."

"No, no", he went on, loud and blustery, "No, I would never laugh at someone I didn't know!"

So Miriam just looked at him and let them pass. After they had gone, she took the photos in the previous post... and then walked quietly home. She'll go back on the breakwater again on a nice quiet weekday before she goes home. A cold grey day with nobody else around.

Here's the guy and his wife... in the distance, where they belong.