I found 33 out of 45 mermaids’ tails, nearly three quarters, then ran out of time, though some were way off my bus or walking routes anyway. Some people apparently snapped them all on the first day! There was plenty for children to do at the farewell event, from games to painting their own tails. The whole event must have taken a lot of planning and a lot of artists. The final part will see all the tails auctioned off.
Tides are a fascinating phenomena. I first became aware of them when I was eight and we had a fortnight’s holiday in a converted train carriage in Wittering, West Sussex. Mum and Dad obtained a tide timetable so we could visit the beach at low tide when the sand ( sand flats perhaps a better description ) appeared and we were safe in the shallow water. My parents sat on the beach with a rug over their knees and no intention of going in the water. At high tide we abandoned the pebble beach for cultural pursuits such as visiting Chichester Cathedral. Staying for a fortnight illustrated the fact that times of the tides changed slightly every day, for reasons I still don’t understand, but the Moon is involved. So a typical holiday agenda would be beach in the morning first week and by second week, beach in the afternoon.
Tides are at their most interesting when islands are involved, islands close enough to walk to at low tide, with the additional excitement of perhaps being stranded or washed away on the incoming tide. At Saint Michael’s Mount in Cornwall you can walk across a stone causeway or have a boat ride at high tide. By the time you have finished exploring the little rocky island the tide will probably have turned and you will return by the opposite method to your arrival. The Saint Aubyn family still live here and manage it with the National Trust. On arrival you can follow a steep path winding up to the castle. The harbour village has a shop and café. This is my favourite island, what fun to enjoy living on an island, while still being able to pop over to the mainland for your shopping. I love the sub tropical terraced gardens and the castle is very homely, just the sort of little castle I would like to own.
We have also been to the mother ship, I mean monastery, Mont Saint Michel in Normandy, France. This island is on a larger scale, full of restaurants and tourists. You can walk all round the island at low tide and there are lots of photo opportunities. In more recent times no cars go over the causeway. There is a visitor centre with car park and a free shuttle bus across the causeway, or you can take a horse and carriage or walk. The tides vary greatly, at roughly 14 metres (46 ft) between highest and lowest water.
If you have ever travelled on the east coast railway line to Edinburgh you will have been treated to views of Durham Cathedral high above and the Newcastle bridges, but also you can look across shimmering seas to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. I instantly wanted to go there and we finally made it on a Northumberland holiday which included other great sights such as… you will have to wait for another day to find out.
The island has a causeway which you can drive across, though you leave you car in the car park to enjoy the peace of the island. Saint Aiden came from the holy Island of Iona on the west coast of Scotland to found an abbey.
When we visited, a bride was being driven across in a carriage pulled by black horses, she was being married at the castle. We wondered if the wedding guests would all get off the island again before high tide.
‘Warning signs urge visitors walking to the island to keep to the marked path, to check tide times and weather carefully. For drivers, tide tables are prominently displayed at both ends of the causeway The causeway is generally open from about three hours after high tide until two hours before the next high tide. Despite these warnings, about one vehicle each month is stranded on the causeway, requiring rescue by HM Coastguard and / or the SeahousesRNLI lifeboat.’
Tidal fun doesn’t have to involve an island. We once had a holiday on Grange-over-Sands railway station, Cumbria. The working station also had part of the building converted to a cottage, it was surreal hearing trains go through in the middle of the night. Grange-over-Grass might be a more appropriate name as at low tide sheep were put out to graze, then sheepdogs rounded them up before the incoming tide. The station looked out over the vast stretch of Morecambe Bay. I have looked this up and can’t find holiday accommodation listed for the station or any mention of sheep. Did I imagine the whole thing?
You can walk across the bay at low tide, it’s a long way and the Morecambe Bay sands are renowned for their quick sands and fast flowing tides. Crossing the sands has always been dangerous. The King’s Guide to the Sands is the royally appointed guide to crossing the sands.
We did not try that.
What is your favourite island and more interestingly, have you ever been stranded on one?
Two sisters recently reinstated a charity walk we did regularly in the previous decade; no T-shirts or requests for money, we just paid to take part. The original walks started at the Hengistbury Head end of the promenade in Bournemouth and we walked to Sandbanks in Poole at the other end of the promenade. As it was for fun as well as charity, walkers could join and leave at any point. Along the way we stopped for morning coffee on Bournemouth Pier, lunch at Sandbanks and afternoon tea on the way back. Poole Bay claims seven miles of beaches, so in those pre Fitbit and smartphone days we probably walked about fourteen miles. We took all day, but talking you don’t notice the miles.
This time it was decided to start at Bournemouth Pier as everyone was older and it was the easiest point for everyone to get to on the bus from all over the area. It was such a nice day I walked from home in Southbourne, not quite the beginning of the prom. The cliff top was lovely with gorse in full bloom. Friends who couldn’t come donated money. How did we get on?
A busy sunny Saturday, everyone was out.
But DANGER lurked
The cliff is always falling down.
Coffee Break
Have we reached the end?
Yes, the very end of the promenade, but the Jazz cafe is too busy so we make a detour onwards to the promise of lunch…
…around Poole Harbour….
Well not all the way round…
Cafe in sight, but turns out it’s being renovated…
However, this is Sandbanks and a kiosk is selling designer sourdough sandwiches
Lunch with a view and some walkers get a lift home..
Four of us make it back to Bournemouth and disperse to our buses after a cup of tea. I round off my pix with a walk to the end of the pier, but don’t linger as a strong easterly wind has sprung up. With my high tech devices and a note book, my phone tells me 12.7 kms were covered on the main walk and my Fitbit notched up eight and a half miles. I walked 18 kms since leaving home, or nearly ten miles since getting out of bed. Not quite the marathons of celebrities, but we raised enough money to share between two local charities.Thanks to Brenda and Sheila for organising the walk.
Looking towards home
Have you been on any interesting, dangerous or even totally insane charity walks, runs or climbs?
Tidalscribe Tales is now live as a paperback. If you want to know how to publish a paperback with KDP best not to ask me. I again followed Sam Kern’s book.
My second proof copy revealed I had ironed out a few problems subject to some compromises, at least I had managed to get some writing on the back cover…
Amazon always tells you if there is a problem, though you may not understand what the problem is.
You have submitted your manuscript in ( selection of incomprehensible numbers and letter ) format. Do you wish the Amazon Elves to change it to ( further set of incomprehensible numbers and letters ) format?
Yeah, whatever..
Looking at the nice large print I think they may have meant my manuscript would not have enough pages to fill the size book I chose, so they just made the writing bigger. Fine, I like the larger print.
While Team G were staying at half term I had help changing my photos to PDF so I could make another attempt to design my own cover. Alas the pictures were not the right size and the elves are not allowed to have scissors, so I returned to Amazon Cover Creator and the only template that vaguely made any sense. I like to think I am leaning towards the simplicity of the early Penguin books with a picture stuck on.
Can you tell the difference?
I noticed something slightly awry with the second proof copy. The colour was not as bright, the sea water not as clear and the sky not as blue! Which elf is in charge of paint? The colour choice was not very inspiring to begin with. But hey ho, the exercise was about producing a real book by myself and I have. My sister in Australia has ordered three copies, but has to wait till the middle of the month. We await with interest to see where Amazon Australia prints their copies. Perhaps the covers will appear in the rich red of The Pilbara or Uluru.
If anyone else orders a paperback why not follow her example and order two extra copies for friends.
I have dusted and vacuumed the Books and About pages on my website to welcome the new book, but have hit a brick wall editing my Amazon Author Page.. but you don’t want to hear about that on a Friday evening.
Do not be put off publishing on KDP, I’m sure plenty of authors know exactly what they are doing. There is also help available from various companies who will handle the technical side, some doing as much or as little of the whole editing process as suits you. I am also well aware that there are other places to self publish, but I can’t be bothered but I am enjoying producing whatever books I want, whenever as an independent boutique publisher…
Visit my Book and About pages to read about my previous books.
Are you an Indie Author? How do you like to tackle getting your books published?
I have been a little distanced from blogging recently. It’s half term and I’m briefly in between visitors. This bleak time of year is perfect for catching up on creative pursuits, so I have built the Lego orchid I got for my birthday this time last year and crocheted an African Violet from a Christmas book.
For this year’s birthday my younger son sent me a Fitbit and my older son set it up. I haven’t figured out most of the functions, my main in-put was choosing the colour of the strap, burnt orange. I know my heart is beating and messages pop up on my phone and emails to reveal that since Sunday I have earned three pairs of shoes and a Marathon badge. Even as I write this it has the cheek to buzz me and say it’s time to move.
Most importantly, I have actually published my first book on Amazon Kindle since November 2019, all by myself.
My late husband never read any of my books, but he did learn from scratch how to publish them and created the covers with his photographic and digital skills. He had the advantage of never panicking with computers and not being emotionally involved with the books.
Not completely by myself as I followed word by word a handy book I downloaded to my Kindle called very originally…
I went to places on Microsoft Word I have never been before and conquered two of the fears experienced by beginners formulating a manuscript for an eBook, page breaks and even scarier, chapter headings and table of contents.
I got the message every book parent waits for, your book is live on Kindle, before I had even gone to bed. I downloaded it, but it did not appear on my Kindle, which seemed to have gone on WIFI strike. I had no idea if my book was okay.
After trying various things, I eventually hit upon an idea when I got home the next afternoon. I turned my Kindle off and on again and my book appeared instantly. There might just be a couple of deliberate mistakes on the Kindle version, see if you can spot them.
Yesterday I ordered my second proof copy of the paperback version, all part of the learning experience… Tidalscribe Tales is another collection of short fiction, a handy volume to practice with while my next novel evolves. The challenge is to create a cover with a back, front and spine, with illustrations of some sort. You can use Amazon cover creator or have a go yourself. I wanted to use my own photos; I take many with no idea what size, shape or mysterious formats they might be in. Amazon rejected them. I tried the Amazon cover and it let me put my picture on the front, sort of… anyway, at least my first proof copy enabled me to spot a few things that needed changing. Hopefully a future blog will reveal how I got on.
Why does this little fellow fear Burns Night?Warning, the following picture may contain upsetting images.
New eyesight test for frequent users of screens. Can you tell the difference?
What crafty ideas did you get for Christmas?
What have you ordered on line recently? ‘Hoovering’ used to be a simple operation…
Let’s relax and play some games. Do you manage to fill in all the lines?
How is your language learning going?
Do you manage to win at Wordblitz or start off hopeful…
Still hopeful, but it usually goes wrong in the last round. Final results later perhaps…
Results just in, scroll down to the end.
Luckily I seem to have acquired a new friend.
Yup, beaten again. I’m the left hand side, I’m not saying who is on the right, it could be one of several friends who regularly beat me. A scientific study shows it makes no difference whether I am playing on my desk top, on my iPad or on my phone on the wobbly bus.
How do you like to pass these winter days or hot summer days?
My father came home one day, very excited with a new invention, Velcro! He worked in plastics, but I’m not sure if the plastic factory where he was manager actually produced it. Looking up Velcro I see it was commercially available in the fifties, but to us in the late 1960s it was a novelty. He kept trying to find ways of using Velcro around the house.
More exciting inventions lay ahead of course, Dad once said that he would like to live to a hundred to see what would be invented. Sadly he only got past seventy. August 2025 he would have been one hundred and I have thought for a while it would be interesting to think of how many new inventions he has missed. This is rather an overwhelming task; there is a difference between something being invented and most people being aware or getting to use it.
2025 also marks a quarter of a century gone by, whether 25 is the last year of the quarter or the first year of the next, doesn’t really matter. I can remember when, thanks to George Orwell, 1984 was The Future, then 2001 A Space Odyssey confirmed the start of a new century as the obvious FUTURE when we would be living in plastic bubbles on the moon.
All that seemed to happen at the turn of the century was the panic that all the computers would get confused and everything would be switched off. At work we were seriously considering whether we should all go home and fill the garage with tins of food and flagons of water. Chez Gogerty we didn’t in the end and luckily all was well.
How has life changed in those twenty five years? Before the millennium I naively thought the twenty first century would be one of peace after all the violence of the twentieth, how wrong could I be. We can definitely conclude that humans have tried everything to make the world a better place, following faith, education, new political ideas, better medical treatments, scientific improvements. Alas new inventions are hijacked by criminals and war mongers as well as doctors and scientists hoping to improve lives.
So what in your life is vastly different from 2001 AD or CE .
I seem to recall saying at the end of last century that had I known home computers were going to be invented, I would not have got married let alone had children! I cannot recall why. Probably children arguing over whose turn it was to use the one computer and me saying everyone was spending too much time on that ghastly second hand machine with green writing, my memories are hazy. I do know that fathers were saying they should get a computer for the children, when they actually wanted one for themselves.
Now of course I can’t imagine not having a computer and iPad and panic if I forget my phone, even if I am just popping to the greengrocers.
What has changed in your life over the past twenty five years?
If you live in a city or suburb you will probably hope to get away for a change of scenery. As you stand on top of a moor, hearing only sheep bleating, you will say to yourself ‘This is Real Life.’ The same thoughts will surface if you stand on a rocky outcrop feeling the spray from the waves pounding below, or perhaps you have visited a peaceful holy island, Iona or Lindisfarne.
Supposing you move somewhere remote and idyllic, or to the coast and can saunter down to the beach on a wild winter day, dodging waves. Sheer bliss. Then one day you go up to London to visit friends or relatives or for a cultural outing. As you arrive at a London terminus, descend into the underground, hear the rumble of an approaching tube train, then squeeze on board with the multitudes, you find yourself saying ‘Back to Real Life!’
Could it be that real life must involve cities, mainline railway stations and underground trains?
Those millions of us brought up in suburbs anywhere in the world are bound to feel we are never in real life; neither in the bustling heart of the city, nor in the countryside growing food and raising livestock to feed the nation.
When you turn on the television news real life takes on a different dimension. Why are your working on the cheese counter at Waitrose when that girl you were at school with is now a war correspondent standing on a heap of rubble?
Is real life the peace all great prophets have urged us to follow; cherishing the soil, creating harmony, music, arts, science and babies. Or is reality living on a knife edge beneath a volcano or on an earthquake fault line? Are you likely to see your home swept away by fire or flood or do you face death every day in war?
Have you experienced real life or are you still waiting to find it?
Times and Tides of a Beachwriter 