768

"What's it like, having a poet for a father?"

I’ve never had an answer for that question.

I don't know. What's it like to have your father for a father? Ask me what it’s like to breath air, to wear skin.

It was wonderful. It was terrible. It was all I ever knew.

I suppose some writers settle on a destination, strike out, and arrive precisely according to map and timetable.

I guess I'm not one of them.

A couple of months after coming back from the Ireland tour, a number of my essays from Notes to Self were picked up by the mother of all women's magazines. The Toronto Globe and Mail featured guest commentary from me for the second time this year. Things have been happening. Not as often or as consistently as I would like, but doors are opening to me on the prose front, and while I may not be much good at sticking to maps, I do have enough sense to walk through open doors.

I am hoping they eventually lead to a comfortable room where the bills are paid and I don't need to do anything else but write while the kids are in school. A column or a book deal. That's a fairly far-fetched notion, but not astronomically out of reach. So for the past six months, I've been pouring my energy into the vehicle that seems to have the greatest likelihood of taking me there, my prose.

Don't count me out yet, but it's possible that the Yale Younger Poets program (see sidebar) may have to soldier on without me (oh well, I was going to have to become a U.S. citizen to enter, anyway, and the contest regulations are daunting enough without bringing the INS into it).

Creativity is energy, and bound to the law of conservation. Nothing gets lost. While I haven't been writing poems recently, more and more poetry has been seeping into my prose. I began to notice that certain compositions of mine, both on- and offline were written in a very distinct voice, one that would be more familiar to my readers here, than at Notes. I also noticed that these pieces seemed to be excerpts of something, although I didn't know what.

About a month ago, I realized I was working on a memoir of my relationship with my father. It wasn't a decision; it was a revelation. In a second, I knew the title, the themes, the tone, and (very loosely) the structure. I was literally dizzy with it. I began pulling these "excerpts" together into one document, and saw that I actually began writing this book here, on this blog.

Again and again, I would sit down to write about my poetry, and find myself needing to talk about my father, about the disentangling of my voice from his, about the burden of his personal mythology as an artist, about my subversive and misdirected attempts to break into the fraternity of male artists that seemed to be the organizing principle around which my girlhood was centered, about my dangerous addiction to the role of muse.

About growing up as, and away from, the poet's daughter. About growing toward myself.

I thought these recollections and reflections would just be asides, background color. I didn't want to make it all about him. But there's a story in front of me, an open door, and I need to walk through.

---

914


Visitors here must assume I have abandoned poetry. I haven't. It's just been a phase of expansion for my prose writing, and one of contraction for verse. Developments on that other front have demanded the greater portion of my creative attention recently, but I expect to be able to turn around and spend more time with my first love over the summer. I will write more about this see-saw act soon.

963: Not Far Behind


My late grandmother Mary was a poet also, and a very great lady. My aunt, Katie Pittman, her daughter-law, recently wrote this remembrance of her for a Woman's Day event at which she spoke in St. John's. My cousin Erika posted it on her private blog, but I asked for Katie's permission to share it with the world, which she has generously granted.

I was very close to my grandmother, and have always been told I resemble her, physically and personally. I should be so lucky.—k.



Len Margaret was born Mary Margaret Leonard in St. Leonard’s, Placentia Bay in 1913, where her family had lived since the early 1700’s.

Although she left St. Leonard’s in her 20’s, her birthplace continued to be the creative and beloved source she drew on throughout her lifetime.

In 1980 she published her first and only book, Fish and Brewis, Toutons and Tales, in which, remarkably, she wove stories and poems recipes and recollections of St. Leonard’s.

As Ray Guy said in his introduction “ Fish and Brewis, Toutons and Tales, tells us about bright lamps, warm kitchens and full, contented people. It proves we not only endured but we also enjoyed”.

More remarkable, perhaps, was the map she drew showing each and every home and landmark in St. Leonards and the list she compiled of all who lived there. The book blended tales of ghosts and fairies that inhabited the place, along with the very real people who shared the magical landscape.

She writes in part: “a short distance from Lodore (a st. Leonard’s landmark) were the ruins of the old stone church where we were not ever supposed to go, but where we went anyway. We made sure we got out of there before the sun went down because of ghosts, especially the “two black dogs with no heads” that walked through the churchyard gate between daylight and dark, and vanished in front of your eyes. On the other hand, we would have welcomed the sound of the Sanctus bell that the old people said they had heard on Sunday morning for months after the church was destroyed by fire.”

When I met Len Margaret, I was fourteen, and she was Mary Pittman, a very sophisticated woman of 48. By this time, she had moved from St. Leonard’s to Bell Island to Corner Brook. She had taught school, helped her husband manage a hotel and a chicken farm, was still raising many of her eight children. Little did i know that five years later, she would become my reluctant mother-in-law and that for the next 35 years she would be a huge part of my life and the life of my family.

During the years of raising her children, Mary’s writing took a secondary role, although following her death, scraps of scribbled paper tucked in every nook and cranny gave testament to the fact that she never abandoned her love of writing.

What she did do during those years was encourage her children in all aspects of the arts, supporting their every effort at writing, drawing or acting. Today that legacy lives on in her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Above all though, she passed on to all of them a deep curiosity about life.

In the 1970’s Mary’s son Al was beginning to achieve some notice as a poet and it was al who encouraged his mother to begin submitting work for publication. She chose not to use her married name partly, I think, so that her work would be seen for its own merit and partly in homage to her family name and birthplace. Soon, Len Margaret’s poems began to appear in publications. At this same time, Mary was teaching adult education in Corner Brook and this experience inspired one of her earliest published poems and what i think may well be her best poem – Night School - in which she describes several of her adult students and maybe herself as well. I’ll read it for you though I can hardly ever do so without crying.

Night school.
By Len Margaret
(published in Scruncheons, Sept. 1973)

1. (Ernest Hearley)

i hear the teacher’s
heels clicking
on the stone floor

i smile good night
pretending i’m brave

i sit in the back
so that she
won’t see me
watching her

she catches my eye
and
i look at the wall

she comes down through
rows of desks
and takes my
hand

three gold rings
and herring scales.


2. (Jack Brewer)

i’m late because
i had to wash up good
on account of i was
clearing the storm sewer

the kids got
at my scribbler and
tore the leaves out

anyways
i’m so goddamn stun’d
i forget from one night
to the other

you’re looking good
yourself
miss.


3. (Noel Slaney)

i’m 56
and tired
of taking orders
from people
who don’t give a damn
that i’m dying
shift by sweaty shift

when i’m done
what will they do
give me a pick and shovel
and tell me to dig
myself in

let me sit here
a while miss
where i won’t hear
the rocks falling on my grave.


4. (Phonse Decker)

how can i learn
to write
when the pencil
takes crazy steps across
the page and my
hand shivers
i can swing the sledgehammer
and it
goes where i want
but the pencil
won’t stay with me

maybe i could do better if
my hands wouldn’t
sweat


5. (Billy Hynes)

they say i’m crazy
because
i go to night school
but today i could read
all the names on all
the bloody cartons stacked
on the truck

i sat beside the driver
and smiled.


6. (Miss Crowley)

how can I tell Ton Chung
that his skin is
the color of
summer hay
his eyes like
brown spring pools
and when he speaks
I see butterflies
hovering over plum blossoms
in a tea garden

Other publications followed and although she was proud of her achievements, unless someone else mentioned it – she never did.

Except for a couple of years in the 1960s when the family lived in Labrador City, Corner Brook was home. Mary, in her own words, loved every minute of living in Corner Brook but when the opportunity came in the 1970’s to move with her family to a little cottage on the Humber River, she jumped at the chance. As she said in a family letter:

“…the river became my school, my church and my line of communication with birds and beasts.”

Here she reveled in the outdoors and spent many evenings in her boat fishing in the quiet water of the river. In a poem dedicated to the late Dermot O’Reilly, she wrote about this love of her place in the Humber Valley.

Poem For Dermot O’Reilly
(published in 31 Newfoundland Poets 1979)


1.
Since I came
to this quiet valley
how many dawns
have I seen stealing
over the river
blushing the mountain tops
like candle flames
on a high altar
and how many nights
with the candles blown
have I listened
to the sounds
of flowing!

2.
Some day soon I suppose
I will have to sit
And tat lace edges on pillow cases
To show my usefulness

In this late year
however I’m afraid
I would rather lie
on soft leaves left
by last fall’s heavy breathing
and flirt with a sparrow
whose only purpose
is to keep a tree
between me
and him.

After her husband died, Mary had to move once more. This time to Grand Falls where she would be closer to family. We all worried about her leaving the place on the Humber she called “Innisfree.”

A few years after leaving the Humber she wrote:

“I thought I would die the evening I left to live in Grand Falls, it was in late fall. The valley was bursting with color. Time to pick autumn leaves to press and place them in the big brown jar in front of the fireplace. I had given the hens and rooster away. Freckles was on the back seat of the car, wagging his tail and in his dog’s mind thought it was another great adventure like crossing the river in the canoe or scattering ducklings from their nest in the reeds. I went back to spend three summers on the river after that. It was different.

One learns to deal with the past in his or her own way. There’s no way to describe that.”

And deal with it, she did.

After a year or two in Grand Falls, Mary jumped into action. She became the driving force of the senior citizen’s association. She lobbied government, she organized learning events for seniors, she oversaw the building of a senior citizen club house, she supervised community service for young offenders, and she spoke to school groups about her writing. For all of this, one year, she was made Grand Falls Senior Citizen of the Year.

As with every place she had lived, she made that place home and established life long friendships. Her home was always open to visitors and you would be welcome to stay five minutes or five days. She always had interesting things to tell you and an interest in what you had to say. Everyone was welcome as long as they behaved themselves – and I do mean everyone. There is an often told story how she received visits each summer from members of a motorcycle gang – this after she had taught “those nice boys” to cook a jiggs dinner.

Whether Mary was writing as Len Margaret for publication or as Mary Pittman in letters just for you, she wrote about the things she loved. She wrote about people, about plants and trees, about birds and seasons changing and trout fishing and she told stories that wove the past and present together and made it real to the reader. Every line she wrote told so much about her and her optimism about life.

I’ll leave you by paraphrasing the close of a letter she wrote to us late in her life from Grand Falls because it seems appropriate for today:

“Another week or so and March will be over. The worst is done. March may be blustery, lean and hungry but April is not far behind.”

Written by Katie Pittman, reprinted with permission.

978


Two weeks since I left Ireland. In dreams I am still there.

Every single night.

990


On Sunday, the program had us in a Dublin neighbourhood pub for back to back music sessions from three in the afternoon 'til close, which was more than most of us could face without breaking down and crying. (Incidentally, it was the over-50 crowd who were the die-hards among us, while the rest would be standing by the venue exit each night ready to board the coach and get to bed.)

Consequently, the majority passed on the afternoon country & bluegrass music session, which was a pity, because by all reports it was excellent. It would have been my session of choice, but the pub was across town, and I would have been in for the long haul. After some hemming and hawing in the lobby, Patrick decided to catch a nap and I went for a walk. We had supper at a pizza joint in Temple Bar, where management seemed to feel quite strongly that corn kernels are what's been missing from pizza all this time.

We caught a cab to the pub for the late session, which featured local traditional musicians. There were several fiddlers, a couple of guitars, accordian, uillean pipes, and a bodhran. The music was great. Pamela Morgan paid tribute to our recently deceased Dermot O'Reilly, which caught me off guard and made me cry. About that time, I noticed an older man come in who reminded me both of Dermot and my father a little. We ended up in the same cab together at the end of the evening. He was Sligo poet Dermot Healey, who was to be on the program with us at Dun Laoghaire the following evening.

That was to be our last gig in Ireland. We shared an inflated and convoluted cab ride down the coast to Dun Laoghaire early in the day, hoping to catch the student March Hare at the local college. But our cabbie couldn't find the place and by that time we hated him too much to hand him one more Euro than we were already into him for, so we abandoned the quest and had him drop us straight at the reading venue. We had a few pints and waited for the rest of our group to trickle in.

The evening was great. Everyone's energy was high. The local performers were terrific, especially the Shannon Colleens, a singing duo who did a biting satire about American soldiers who stopover in Ireland on their way to Iraq. It was a great night to go out on. The Newfoundlanders had an early morning flight back to Canada, so we didn't linger long after the show, although several of us gathered in the hotel pub for tea and farewell.

It was lonely the next day after they'd all left. We spent a quiet day in the city, Patrick working out of the hotel pub and me walking across the Liffey to the Writer's Museum. We splurged that night on the early prix fixe menu at a French restaurant off St. Stephen's Green, and reviewed all the ways in which we'd fallen in love with our travelling companions and with Ireland. Neither of those two threads feels like it ends here.

993


Curious about some of the folks I've been rambling around Ireland with? Here's a link to audio performances by several of them:

Rattling Books on MySpace

Also check out the bios for

Joel
Lisa
Michael

More later on the rest.

995


Sunday, 4 March Dublin

Sitting in a (sigh) pub in Dublin with a cappucino, waiting to be checked in. It looks like it might take a while. Grey and raining day here, and not nearly enough sleep last night.

Yesterday morning was our last in Waterford City, and I was sad to say goodbye. It was a bright beautiful morning, and Patrick and I set out after breakfast to walk up and down the cobbled square, which was full of Saturday morning market stalls and buskers. A saxophonist burst into ABBA at which point we had to come to a complete halt, me grinning hugely at Patrick. “This is the happiest day of my life,” I sighed.

We had a quick tour of Waterford’s great museum, which has installed a Newfoundland exhibit since I last visited four years ago. Then a sublime lunch in the sunny, modern café: panninis of melted cheese and Irish ham with a glass of shiraz and a ginger-pear cake for dessert. That’s what passes for cafeteria food in Europe. We talked earnestly about moving there with the children, which is an obligatory point in any really worthwhile vacation. I wish it was mandatory for every American citizen to spend time abroad, just to confront the reality that people all over the world are enjoying life, liberty and pursuing happiness without the benefit of the so-called American values that some think need to be exported at the end of a tank.

I realize being on vacation is not a true measure of day to day living in a foreign country, but it seems fair to observe that the baseline asthetic is higher here. Even mass-produced items are beautiful. The attention to quality seems to require that life be lived more mindfully. You go to the butcher for your fresh meat, the greengrocer for your produce, the bakers for your bread. The carrots have dirt on them that needs to be washed off. It all seems more natural, and makes you wonder what on earth we are doing with all the time we are supposedly saving with convenience items in America. More time for tv? More time to rush to the next thing to distract us from living life?

We boarded the coach at two for our gig in Enniscorthy, the high point of which was a private tour of the town castle. It has just been turned over to the national trust, having been run locally for years. It had become a kind of wonderfully eclectic storage shed, with people donating family antiques, from penny farthing bicycles to woolen socks worn in the Easter Uprising of ’16. It had a tiny dank dungeon, to which we applied our clown car routine, clambering one after another down a tiny staircase into a cave with barely room to turn around and get the hell out.

We had dinner with our hosts at the venue, an American-style pub/restaurant. The reading itself was in a dedicated area with a stage. I went up first. The sound was problematic, but the room was filled and the audience was warm and responsive. Unfortunately, there was some miscommunication about time slots and it became a marathon. Our energy was pretty low by the time we piled on the bus. I thought the atmosphere was summed up perfectly by the kind of anecdotes our coach driver was telling: a few nights before he had entertained us on the way home with heartwarming tales about his Jack Russell terrier; on this night he was pointing out points along the way where pedestrians got killed in horrible traffic accidents. It was grim all around.

We did have a clear view of the lunar eclipse from the pub parking lot. We snuck out the back door one and two at a time, to smoke cigarettes and curse the long-winded; to crane our necks to the sky and watch our own shadow.

997


When Patrick and I lived in Mexico, we had a running joke over the daily decision of what to eat for supper. “I know!” one of us would say. “What about some sort of spicy meat, wrapped in some sort of flat bread—say, I don’t know, a corn tortilla— and maybe some cheese melted over it?

“Hmmm,” the other would say, as if pondering a bold culinary excursion where no tourista had gone before. “And what if there were some beans on the side?”

We have launched a reprisal of this routine in Ireland. “So, what’s happening tonight?” one of us will ask.

“I’m not sure, but I believe there will be people gathering in a pub. And that there might be alcohol served in large pint glasses.”

“And might there be some instruments, and perhaps some singing, involved?”

“Why, yes, Yes, I believe there might.”

In fact, I am composing this from a pub, and have just consumed a pint.

We spent our first really wretched day traipsing around Wexford County in the driving rain, throwing money at various transportation workers. It was a day off from performing, and instead of doing the sane thing and hanging around in bed all day, drinking hot tea and watching Spongebob in Gaelic on the Irish language channel ( which, next to the mummified cat and rat in Christ Church Cathedral is the most amazing thing I’ve seen in Ireland), I insisted we grab a bus and try to find a famine museum that turned out not to be open. After missing several buses and taxis, we then took a cab for ten euros to an outdoor interpretive exhibit of Stone Age culture, where we had a coffee and decided from the glassed-in café that the early Celts could have it, and took another ten euro cab back to a bus shelter to wait for the next bus back to Waterford.

We must have spent 70 euros, and on absolutely nothing. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson after I changed my mind the other night about going to Cork and caught a late afternoon bus, only to start violently vomiting in the public toilet as soon as I arrived at the theatre, and spent a miserable evening on the lobby sofa, listening to the applause within. All because I was afraid to miss out on anything.

Of course there was a pub session immediately following.

Oh well, they can’t all be An Rinn and Kilkenny, which were fantastic venues, although very different from one another, the first being in the village pub and the latter being in the tower room of Kilkenny Castle. Both were superb. We had most of yesterday afternoon to wander around Kilkenny, which is a gorgeous medieval city. I found the Irish counterpart to Wal-mart, Dunne’s, and bought lingerie and cookies. Had a great meal of roast pork in (wait for it) the pub. Picked up some lovely linen handkerchiefs too.

There were some fantastic highpoints in the Kilkenny show, which was a night off for me. Lisa Moore read from her novel Alligator. Nick Avis had the audience in the palm of his hand. Ron Hynes did his magic. A local poet, Mark Roper, almost took my breath away. I was determined to meet him before we left the building for (guess) the pub, and practically bowled him over where he stood, the poor man. Anyway, he was very sweet and gracious and he and I and his lovely wife Jane all had a drink together. Do look up his work. I thought it was outstanding.

It was a great day and night, and I’d be hard pressed to single out favorite moments, but some that come to mind are cappuccino and encouragement from Lisa, a wee, white haired man in the local pub standing up to sing us a song, standing in a phone booth in Kilkenny talking to Georgia back in Little Rock, because I had to tell her I was eating a Cadbury bar.

In An Rinn, we were blown away by a group of young local musicians, and an Irish poet by the the name of Áine Uí Fhoghlú, who writes in Irish and with whom I got to chatting later and hope to stay in touch.

Two funny moments from the An Rinn pub stand out and beg to be memorialized. To set up the first, I need to tell you that when we got to the pub, we thought at first there had been a mix up with the time—there was hardly a soul in the place. Then it was explained to us that, as it was a Wednesday night in the season of Lent, most of the villagers were still in Mass, and would be along shortly. Well, after church let out, they all filed in, among them an older woman who took her seat at the bar with an air of seniority and welcomed us all like a dowager queen. She was beaming and nodding and singing along from her throne right up until Joel Hynes took the stage and dropped some particularly colourful language.

The poor woman's eyes nearly popped out of her head. Her jaw dropped and she slid off the stool. She stood up and staggered around in circles, as if she had somehow slipped into a deviant parallel universe and could not now find the portal out. I imagine she took to her bed for three days. I wonder if she has recovered yet. Joel and the ladies.

The second cirque-de-hare act had the local master of ceremonies grabbing the microphone out from in front of Michael Crummey mid-reading to admonish the audience to stop talking, as it was distracting for the performers. Michael, considerably distracted, looked on with very nearly the same expression as the dear old lady above. It was hysterical. I don't know how he recovered his composure, but he went back to the beginning and saw it through. A pro, through and through.

It is all too much too keep abreast of, and in the middle of it, my digital camera has come down with its own version of Montezuma’s revenge, refusing to accept local batteries. I hope to sort this out before we move on tomorrow. I would hate to run into any more mummified animals and be caught without my camera.

998


Thursday morning, March 01

We leave for Kilkenny in an hour. Tonight's reading is in the castle there, which sounds like a 180 degree swing from last night's venue, the local pub in the fishing village of An Rinn (Ring), nestled in the Gaeltacht, where Irish is the first language.

Liam Rellis and I were having a chat about the Irish language just before I was due to go on and open the show. "Ah," says Liam, "the proper thing for you to say up there would be (insert unintelligible Gaelic phrase here)."

"Oh," says I, wide-eyed and earnest. "Okay. Tell me again, slowly."

Liam and I proceed to spend the next few minutes rehearsing my opening statement in Irish. Thank god, from the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a bystander smirk behind his pint.

I squinted at Liam. "What exactly does this phrase mean?"

Liam turned red all over, I think more with merriment than chagrin. "Ah, I don't think I could tell ye, Kyran. I'd have to show ye."

Note to self: don't trust the Irish.

I'm about to time out of my wildly expensive pay-by-the-hour internet connection (Patrick calls the local practice of charging for everything from packets of ketchup to coffee refills "death by a thousand cuts"). I want to share much more about our fantastic night in An Rinn and my miserable night in Cork (I changed my mind and caught a late bus), but it will have to wait.

1,001


Tuesday morning, February 27

The bus is leaving for Cork in twenty minutes, and I am going to let it go without me. I’m not on the program tonight, and while Cork was my favorite stop last time around, I’m feeling the need for a time out.

Things kicked off yesterday with a meet and greet at Waterford City Hall. The usual formalities from the usual dignitaries, enlivened by the occasional spark off a live wire. I read Dad’s poem, Rites of Passage, which appears at the front of the new anthology. It’s not a piece I was familiar with, but I enjoyed reading it. I told somebody yesterday that I have put a lot of miles and a lot of years between myself and my father’s name— for this week, I am going to give myself permission to lean into it. For the Dome reading, I lead with another poem of his, A River Runs Through Her. Then four of my own: Launch, Jars of Clay, Vertigo and Catching Up to Her At Last.

There were ten performances in all. Everybody was great, but the energy of the second half ran especially high, starting with poems from Michael Crummey and finishing with Ron Hynes, who brought the house down with “Sonny’s Dream” and “Dublin with Love”. Joel Hynes was also electrifying.

We had a mad bus ride back to the hotel pub. Imagine fifty or so Irish and Newfoundland writers, musicians and entourage barreling down the twisting road together. It was the Mad Hatter’s tea party on wheels. In fact, when Patrick and I were debating over breakfast the pros and cons of heading to Cork today, the thought of a two-hour or longer reprise of last night’s commute was a moment for serious second thought! Fifteen minutes was a great bit of craic. Fifteen minutes more would probably have me hitching it on the side of the road.

Back at the pub, a music session got underway. I felt about six years old, wanting to stay awake for the music so badly, but falling out of my chair with sleepiness. My coach was about to turn into a pumpkin. I called it a night, and was glad for it this morning. The crowd went on well into the wee hours. I heard they even hauled out “Danny Boy” in the end, which you know is the beginning of a downward spiral.

At that point, “even Des went to bed,” someone reported. Far gone, for sure.

1,000


Monday, February 26

This is my fourth day in Ireland, the first day of the official program. It seems like I’ve been here a month already. We took the coach from our B&B to Dublin airport yesterday morning to meet the Newfoundland contingent, who launched the tour in Toronto on Friday night. When their flight came in, it was like the clown car act in the circus, or maybe The 35 People you Meet in Heaven. One familiar face after the other.

We were herded onto a charter bus for the drive to Waterford, where we will be based for the next several days, traveling out into the countryside to various performance venues, which range from concert halls to pubs. It is an eclectic group, as the March Hare roster has always been. The program features the famous, the almost-famous, the infamous and the as-yet unknown. There is a film crew and a radio reporter. And then there are those who are simply along for the ride.

I am so glad that Patrick is here. It was overwhelming on the bus, where my father’s name seemed to be everyone’s every other word. The printed program acknowledges him very beautifully, and the March Hare Anthology, hot off the press, is full of tributes to him as well. I was glad to have my husband’s shoulder to hide out in when I needed to. Also his elbow to nudge me later at the pub when it was time to call it a night. In our daily lives I am generally the activity director, but here, where I need to be free to float in the creative current, it is nice to let him do the “driving”. I have been referring to him as my handler. You'd have to know us to appreciate the irony. Consider the tiger, and its tail.

We did get good rest in Dublin, but last night I tossed and turned in our new hotel bed, and am feeling pretty fuzzy right now. I have to figure out what I am reading tonight, and I’m finding it hard to focus. There has been a tug of war going on my soul between the mother and the poet. The mother is finding it hard to turn it over.

The sun has broken through. Maybe I’ll go for a walk along the quay.