There is nowhere else I'd rather be, nothing else I would prefer to be doing. I am at the beach looking west with the continent behind me as the sun tracks down to the sea. I have my bearings.

I was in my thirties before I learnt that I too would prefer not to see what I could no longer have

We live in specific places. We are marked by a place.

Yet however comforting and peaceful beach-combing is, it ends up like the sea, as disturbing as it is reassuring. In dark moments I believe that walking on a beach at low tide is to be looking for death, or at least anticipating it. You will only find the dead, the spilled and the cast-off. Things torn free of their life or their place.

The notion that love is abroad in the world has shaped my life.

Different tenses and perspectives offer you different things. It helps to distinguish the world that they are in.

Whatever you believe, you need faith to get through the day.