The desired 'stretch' to the evening is finally beginning to show, the longed for extra dose of light is inching and climbing its way north and I know that soon there will be a reason to tug the cord of the yellow venetian blind on my west facing kitchen window in order to clearly see the recipe I follow.

Ah, but everything comes in its own good time. 

Birdsong swamps the garden. It seems to eat away the bad old days and I am full of energy too as the new light shows the cracks and flaws of this life.

I open all the windows. Dust the sills. Toss out the grime of the past year with relish. It slides away from me like a receding tide.

This morning the beach was a sheath of gingerbread dough. The rolling pin of sea did a good job. Flawless. I wished that I'd had a giant cookie cutter to hand to etch the surface with my shapes. I resisted the urge to create but instead walked past the other solitary souls all caught up in their own thoughts, I suppose. 

The sand is pure at nine a.m. It takes my visit gladly whispering little thoughts my way. It says;

'aren't you good to come, look how wonderful I am, see how easy it is to reclaim yourself here, how lost you've been, walk with yourself, one step at a time'.

I come home brimming with resolve. I go to my old writing room. It is like a lonely, lost place. It could be an abandoned train station at dawn, the words of ghosts gag in the shadows. I pull the Turkish rug off my desk and dust spores scatter about like old dreams. I stash the collection of framed photographs into a drawer. It will do. This forgotten place. Then I shout it out, 'it will do' and I hope the gingerbread sand hears me. And so it goes, the rummaging into myself, as if my silent desperation is nothing but a trail of wet sand on the floorboards, evidence that I am about to begin all over again.