Yesterday Alice bit me then .....

....she ate the valentine chocolates while we were out . Definitely something going on there then .

The shells are symbolic of yesterday . A long story . On Tuesday , early , a man was huddled on the beach against the cliff face , partly concealed in a semi cave of rocks . We spied his dog first , intent on digging a large hole and then sitting in it . The impression was that despite the early morning chill , at 8 am , man and dog had been there some time , sitting there and the dog was bored and looking to entertain itself it .

Initially as we came down the steps to the beach I thought the dog was alone . the beach was deserted and , just as when I saw the baby seal , anything like this fills me with a sense of foreboding . Why is a dog wearing a collar alone on the beach . Where is the owner ? Is he/ she collapsed somewhere , or worse , gone into the sea ?

There have been people here who have abandoned their clothes and their lives and walked in , their bodies showing up weeks later .

Then suddenly there he was , red gore tex , sitting on the rocks , almost in a cave , deep in thought . We continued on our usual path which gave him a wide berth but allowed us to see that he was simply there , sitting , whilst the dog dug and dug , for perhaps the thirty minutes it took us to walk the length of the beach and back , then along the concrete walkway and round the promenade as we do each morning . He was still in situ on our return , as if he hadn't moved .

As I worked at home that day , finding myself wondering if he was ok , I returned to the beach at four pm with Alice , and found him gone , and no pile of clothes and no forsaken dog staring out to sea . I went to where he had sat and Alice dug a little where the dog had dug and I sat where he had sat , saw the roll up he had smoked and the pattern made of the shells on a rock .

I wondered what he was thinking ....and how his story unfolded .

And yesterday , I sat in the same spot myself , distressed by Alice 's bite , and looked again at the shells and wondered how it is to walk into the sea .

To be continued .