annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary

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My day out

I went to Margate today to have a swim with my old mate D, who I've known even longer than Bloke - we reckoned it to be about fifty five years.  He was on the fringes of our mob at school, but lived round the corner from me and we were both mad left-wing ranting junior politicos. We formed the local group of the white panthers, in our small town in Sussex, while we were still at school, and held meetings in his bedroom. There was a sitcom starring Robert Lindsay, called Citizen Smith a few years later and honestly, you'd think they'd been watching us - excruciatingly precisely what we were like. When I went to the Isle of Wight festival in 1970, the Hendrix one, and smoked my first joint, as soon as I got home I phoned him, told him to meet me in the park and showed him what a joint was and how to smoke it. We were both naturals. He's still on the left politically, like me, and has lived his life as a musician, never hitting the heights, but earning a reasonable living by playing and more recently teaching in special schools. 


We both started cold water swimming this winter and it was definitely something we had to do together at least once, so off I went to Margate, home of the Turner Contemporary art gallery, where one of my dead-beat ex-sons-in-law was artist in residence for a while, of Dreamland, truly iconic, awful British rundown seaside vibe and of a big sandy beach with a fabulous pool that's revealed at low tide. They need one of these in Worthing - the beach at low tide there is great for dog-walking but awful for swimming, too many slimy, seaweed covered chalky rocks, just below the surface and it's shallow as fuck for miles. 


In we went, fucking freezing, of course, it's April, but the sky was blue, the wind was non existent and the water was calm and perfect. Of course Margate is on the north coast of Kent so the sun is behind you when you're on the beach and when it sets, it's to your left, not right. Which is very disconcerting. I did a beach clean, as I could walk happily on the hard sand, without my dodgy leg complaining.


Sadly, when I drove home I kept getting lost - I couldn't work out how to link the satnav on my phone to the car so I could see it on the screen and thought I'd be OK with just the phone but I couldn't really read it. And the road signs are shit - as I approached the M20, instead of saying London one way and Dover the other, it had Maidstone and some other fucking place, Sheerness, maybe, and I had no idea which way I needed to go, but as soon as I was on it, the car said I was heading north east, entirely wrong, so on and on for fucking ages till I could get off and back on the right way, south east. And I did that more than once. At one point I found myself approaching a massive bridge over the river, the Thames I presumed - it looked like the Dartford bridge but not as busy. Well I knew I didn't need to be north of the river at any point and luckily there was a tiny local road that I managed to swing into before I was up onto that mentalness. It took me just under two hours to get there and more than three to get back. 


But it was great, I'm glad I went and I'm glad I saw D.

12:13 a.m. - 16.04.23

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