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 ...