The sun almost rises

durham_rambler spotted that the octagonal tower house at Seaton Sluice is for sale - which is tempting, but very silly. He described it to helenraven, and she was curious enough to see it that we decided we would pay it a visit on our way up to Lindisfarne (while valydiarosada and D. took the sensible route, via Sainsbury's). It's a charming, chunky little tower, a Vanbrugh jeu d'esprit, with a sea view and a tiny garden, and helenraven conceded that she could see the attraction. But she was stern: "You are the last people who should buy a listed building," and she is probably right. So instead we strolled around, admired the sculptures, and went for fish and chips at the Harbour View.

We took the scenic route north to the island (including getting lost in Newbiggin - when 'lost' means knowing where you are, but not how to get out) and were still there not long after the tide went out. And the rest of the day is a blur of unpacking and other people, with time for a stroll down to the beach. By now the tide was low enough that just meandering along, looking at the tiny shells and the fragments of pottery, picking my way between boulders and clumps of bladder wrack, listening to the seals singing on the mainland, brought me past the Buoy House and round to the path onto the Heugh before I was really aware of it.

There isn't much to be said about the sunrise: I have bought some postcards showing a hazy view of the harbour and castle, with the caption "Sunrise on Lindisfarne", though you can clearly see the bright patch which is the sun halfway up the sky. This appealed to me, because that's exactly how it works. You go out before four in the morning, in not quite full daylight:

and you look at the bank of cloud behind the castle, and know that you will not be seeing the sun clear the horizon today. You walk beyond the castle, and maybe you see a gleam over to the left and maybe you don't, and eventually someone checks their watch and decides that it must be up by now. We waved to R's friend C, who, after delivering him to Farne View had gone off to climb the Cheviot, but without much hope he would see us - the summit was hidden by black cloud; helenraven said she would walk for a bit; durham_rambler, D, R and I turned down Crooked Lonnen and followed the lane back to the village and home.

For obvious reasons, Saturday was a quiet day. valydiarosada and I set off together for the shops, and got as far as the mead factory (and gift shop and deli). I found my way into the URC next door, which I have always just walked past before: it has an attractive garden of almost-wild flowers, and inside there was an exhibition of paintings of views of the island, with the artist in attendance, and he told me about the gallery he is about to open in the village (next Saturday). There have been other small changes: the fudge shop which replaced the generic souvenir shop (next door to the Celtic craft shop) is making a big fuss about its ice cream (Spurreli's - which I'm pretty sure we met in Amble) and has an artistic window display, combining themes of ice cream and art glass; the bookstall that used to be outside the Island Oasis café is now in their courtyard, and I relieved it of a Rex Stout which I hadn't read before (I can never tell from the titles, which are all general-purpose crime titles, or the covers, which all have orchids on them, but this is the one in which Nero Wolfe's daughter turns up, and I reached the end without at any point finding it familiar).

We had planned to eat out, but all the pubs were fully booked. durham_rambler and D. persuaded the Crown and Anchor to provide us with fish and chips to take away - and at huge personal cost to themselves sat in the pub and drank beer until it was ready.

Sunday was as traditional as we get: various people were sent off after breakfast to ring bells, various other people went out for walks. I took my camera down past the car park to the point where the causeway meets the edge of the island. If there are any poppies at all on the island, you'll find them growing along the wall there, maybe not entirely wild but not the cultivated giants either, and I had noticed that there are a fine display this year, an abundance of flowers and enough fallen petals below to make it look as if they are growing from a pool of blood. This was some consolation for missing the thrift entirely: once upon a time we would cross to the island through a carpet of pink, but recently it has been mostly over by the time we arrived. Last year I found a last few clumps of flowers, but this year it is all papery dead heads as far as the eye can see. We reconvened for lunch at the Ship (they do very good crab sandwiches). Much later I walked through the churchyard and down to the beach in the evening sunshine.

Books! Diaries! Book Diary!

helenraven took the second volume of Diary of a Witchcraft Shop by Trevor Jones and Liz Williams from the stack next to my desk, where it had just reached the top of the to-be-written-up-for-the-book-diary pile.

The backlog has reached embarassing proportions (not one but several piles, not all of them entirely stable) and it is possible for me to forget entirely what I thought about a book before its turn comes. On this occasion I may have lost some of the detail, but I had the general outline: as with the first volume, I thought it was an interesting glimpse of another way of life ('only in Glastonbury'), some beautiful descriptions of the Somerset countryside and many very funny stories. It didn't add much to what I had read as mevennen posted to LJ, and I loved - and still miss, for all I know that nothing lasts forever - the experience of reading those posts as they happened, the breath of air from a walk on the Levels, the latest outrageous anecdote about a customer or employee.

(For reference: the books at NewCon Press: though one of the covers must be wrong...)

However: helenraven spent the day laughing a lot and reading selected passages out to the rest of us; D. was so impressed by this that he demanded to see the book, admired the cover ("I like the stuffed demon." "It's a cat.") and was persuaded to give it back by being told where to find volume one; and by the time he and helenraven had swapped over, durham_rambler was queuing up to read it as well.

And the moral of this is, that sometimes a book is the very best form of narrative; and sometimes it's a substitute for a real live narrator telling you stories. But a book is always there when you want it, and this is a fine thing.