Till Receipt, English Seaside

Till Receipt, English Seaside:

Cherries so glossy and red with syrup.

Droplets of unguent juice cascade down my twelve-scoop-ice-cream-wonder in pastel colours.

Flavours melting together in pistachio, cappuccino, bubble gum, blue-raspberry. 

 

The high road curves and a steep slope drops away below the parked ice-cream van.

The grey-green mossyness of the ice-cold North Sea, crash-crashing on the demerara sand

of a misty beach in the British summer.

Sitting up on a heather strewn brackeny hill in the wind-blown scrub,

I shelter behind a broad gorse in golden-yellow bloom.

Ice cream in hand, green-sleeves never sounded so sweet.

 

Towards the beach looking down-hill is a crazy golf course,

flags fluttering on miniature stone bridges and little buildings painted ultramarine and salmon.

To the West, a Victorian funicular trundling up and coming down for the price of 20p.

The sea is a graphite smudge in the far distance and tiny trotting donkeys dots on the sand.

 

On the distant beach an isolated family drama acts out silently

as I sit rugged up against the chill and veiled in drifts of rain.

The ice cream, in waffle cone is starting to melt and dribble down my hand.

I wipe it off with a Pudsey Leisure Centre till receipt I found in my pocket.

The letters, S11 9RX hastily scribbled down one side.

Now with water-colour-effect the numbers disintegrate to a purple-brown smudge.

 

I wonder to myself, “am I a seven or a four on the Enneagram?”

As I stealthily catch a rivulet of mint-choc-chip-coconut-praline on my tongue.

Look out of the side of my glasses to see if anyone noticed and

gather my beautiful violet mac, ill-fitting as it is, more closely around me.


 

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