Whitstable

Sometimes I'm so caught up in work, I don't know what the weather's like. This evening it wasn't until I'd finished my meetings that I realised it was a lovely day. Perfect weather for a drive to the coast.

Surely everyone would have the same idea? But the traffic thinned as the motorway disappeared in the rear view mirror, and suddenly there it is: I can see the sea. The moment of recognition still exciting, even growing up round the corner from the beach.

The tide was in, lazily tumbling the pebbles in the lacy froth at its margin. Small stones rattling against the groynes, just beneath the surface. The grass beside the promenade was golf-course green, the shadows long across the beach. The sea - calm - was a soft milky turquoise with a shimmering strip of rose-gold beneath the deep orange of the setting sun, perfect disc in a darkening blue then disappearing slowly behind a curtain of cloud.

An empty landscape. Fish and chips. Face to the sun. Pebbles underfoot. The whisper of the sea.

Simple pleasures: perfect happiness.