high waves

The surf is high today, but there's little wind. It's leftover movement from yesterday's gales. The sun peaks out, bright and glorious in the hope that winter is almost gone, and then disappears again, hidden behind a range of towering clouds. The rain's stopped, for now, and there seems no end to the dog-walkers on the beach.

The cat sits on pages of my manuscript strewn along the dining room table. He noses an empty bottle of IPA and then sits up and stares. He's happy to be where something's happening, though it's nothing to do with him.

I sip jasmine tea and look at my list of literary agents and their submission requirements. I want more coffee, but I don't want to get too wired. Hence the jasmine. I have two or three draft letters on the go at any given time. I've been here before, but it's not the same.

Twitter and Facebook and chat and email are all switched off. I listen to music without lyrics. I stare out the window and empty my head of all that's not there. There's a line of small birds stood in the silver sheen of wet sand just above the crashing waves. I want them to be sandpipers, but I've no idea what they are. Ornithology's not my thing, though I do know a heron when I see one.

A lone surfer walks up the beach from the water, back to the parking lot. I think I'd rather write letters to literary agents than surf in Scotland in February, and that's saying something.

disc

I bought a frisbee this morning. It's purple. I don't own many purple things, unless you count red wine. And that varies, really. Several shades of red and purple, depending on its age and grape and all manner of variables. But some of them are definitely purple. Grenache tends to have a purple hue. Pinot Noir not so much. 

I bought the frisbee because they never tend to last the winter months. I don't know what happens to them in the meantime. Lost in a season of disuse. I wonder if there's some graveyard of winter frisbees; some dilapidated pile of multi-coloured discs dusted with a fine layer of snow that will never melt. It's an odd thought, I suppose. 

Though I've had odder. 

Last night the wine flowed along with the beer and the whisky and the gin. The guitar strummed and many a string broke. The Guinness tasted good, as did the Springbank. Our banter drifted along happily. The bar was hot, but not too hot. We never waited long to get served. 

I caught a pretty girl's eye and then, later, she caught mine. There was nothing in it. Just noticing, being noticed. 

We got home, three flatmates, in time to open a bottle of wine and finish a bottle of whisky and banter more. Heavier this time, deeper. We paused occasionally to watch drunks wander home, clad in ball gowns and black tie. Placing bets on the couples, watching the spats, laughing at the hapless. We may have been as drunk as them, but we'd won already. We were home. Memories and the future both thrown onto the table, talked about loosely, as we were loose. 

This morning my flip-flops slipped on and my face felt a touch numb. 

I remembered summers, stumbling down to the beach. Heads pounding, maybe a tad dizzy. We'd throw the frisbee around like lunatics. Diving catches, great leaps, acts of heroism for girls that weren't there. The sky so blue and the sea cold and inviting. The pop of the first beer bottle opened rang out and we'd take a break, slick with sweat. We'd try to remember the night before. A night like last night. Then the disk flew again and we'd fall, rend the skin from our limbs on the course sand close to the water. 

Breathless, bleeding, soaking, we sat again and sipped. Hangovers evaporated, sweat stung the eyes. We clinked bottles and cursed work and weather for making life anything but that; what we had then. 

So I bought a frisbee this morning.