22-2-2022: Day 257
I collapsed, tired and leggy, on the beach pebbles at the end of a thirty-minute run along the Shoreham to Worthing seafront. I was feeling high on the 3 R’s. Recharged. Relaxed. And Rejuvenated. Gazing out at the mystical yellow light and wispy white candyfloss clouds hanging over the ocean, there was an air of the unreal, lingering in the solitary dusk before sunset.
Watching the seagulls glide and skim over the water’s surface, I tuned into the high tide rolling and crashing on the shore, to the perfect beat of nature’s metronome.
It was a day of the number twos. No glib reference to the newly boarded up loos off Wide Water whilst busting for a leak, but the significant date on the calendar, which was bringing out the higher numerologist previously hidden and locked in my innermost temple.
Skimming flat stones into the rise and fall of the ocean waves, I pondered in the silence on the deeper Universal meaning of the twos, as the burning orange sun dropped into the sea beyond the pale.
26-2-2022: Day 261
As the golf ball sailed in the direction of the A259, a busy stretch of the nearby dual carriageway, I was cautiously reminded of the thoughtful warning sign on the first hole of the Par 3 course. Police will get involved in any ‘malicious damage’ to motor vehicles in the area surrounding the Rustington golf course. Playing on a sunny Saturday at noon, I thought ‘fuck it’ there’s no malice in my liberally swinging seven iron club.
We were three generations of family out on the course that half-term weekend, initiating the ‘boy’ in a frustrating-as-hell sport I never mastered to any respectable handicap. Son, father, and granddad – knocking the ball about freely regardless of talent or actual ability.
I was having vivid flashbacks of being out in the elements, teeing off in the wind, rain, or snow, as I struggled to get any real handle on life beyond the Trenches. Yet, watching the boy plug and thrash his way round the course, there was a distinctly satisfying feeling of handing down the clubs to the next generation.
28-2-2022: Day 263
Things began to unravel when the vet puts a lead bullet in the head of the dying thorough-bred show horse. I was watching ‘The Nest’, a cautionary cinematic tale of financial desire gone awry, corporate wanderlust, and stripped back home truths set in the yuppie boom of the 1980’s.
It occurs in a flash how this tragic putting down of the sick family horse, rather like the iconic black stallion of the High Street bank, comes to symbolise greed seducing the mind, poisoning the soul, and wrecking the nuclear family set-up.
Walking the long walk of shame, back home to his Surrey country pile at midnight, atoning for his multitude of sins – the yuppie financier, gambler, charlatan, and wide boy, Jude Law – finds he has lost everything and discovers his family disintegrated into broken emotional shells around him. So, cheerily, the film credits roll.
Struck by the depths to which the soul in freefall can plummet, I spend the rest of the evening drawing up gratitude lists and balancing the karmic deposit books in my rattled noggin.