This was nature at its starkest darkest best. No colour just different shades of rage from the grumpy grey-clouded overcrowded sky to the once bright chalk-white faces of the greyscaled cliffs and the hostile heaving sea. Like battlebound braves, waves after waves pounded the beach, reached the defensive wall now small and meaningless and threw themselves headlong strong and crazy on to the lazy promenade.
Where the horizon should be the sea and sky were one, echoing back each crack of thunder and reflecting the frightening blasts of lightning heightening the horrific beauty of the scene. Meanwhile serious rain lashed and splashed the bay, unmerciful darts attacking the parts the advancing sea was yet to wet.
The violence of the storm kept growing, nature throwing everything it had, going mad. The sad little row of beach huts, shuttered but shell-shocked, rocked and rolled, bold but bowing.
Standing watching this was one living soul - Me, with a steaming mug of tea, outside the little hut that never shut in the summer, even on a bummer of a day like this. And glad to be clad in leathers and boots which suits such a moment.
And there on her own looking out to sea, canute-like and spooky, stood my Suzuki, enjoying the jet-wash of her life.
We'd been to this scene so many times before but always saw it as it looks in books, a made-to-pleasure picture-postcard paradise with blue blue skies, the sun a big yellow fellow smiling benignly on a pebbled beach, bleached cliffs, seagulls gliding on a high and a sea that says 'come on it, it's lovely'.
Eventually Suzy and me left and climbed the slippery slope to the cliff-top, stopped for one last look then took a ride back to normality.
Terry Donovan
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-wet-afternoon-in-st-margaret-s-bay/
