Always paddle your own canoe

That's the second line of an old proverb written many years ago in my autograph album by somebody I don't remember.  But the first line is what I really wanted to focus on today: Love many, trust a few.

They (whoever 'they' might be) tell us never to trust what we read in the papers.  And yes, I would tend to go along with that.  Certainly our local paper has a reputation for getting things wrong!  But more about newspapers shortly.

Another class of people I tend not to trust are weather forecasters.  Young Alexis told us last night that today would be a crisp winter's day.  Hmm.  As I set out to walk the dog after breakfast, the rain started.  Granted, it lasted only a couple of minutes and wasn't exactly heavy during those minutes, but we still - a couple of hours later - have 10/10 cloud cover and it's more muggy than crisp.  But I suppose things could always change.

Getting back to newspapers, I thought I read on Thursday in our local free-sheet that the seafront is still covered by the beach after the recent storms and that the Council are waiting until after the spring tides before bringing in machinery to put the beach back where it should be.

"Ha ha!" thought I.  "This is my opportunity."

I had refrained from going onto the sea front to try photographing the waves during the storms so, having read (or thinking I had read) that the pebbles on the sea front were up to the level of the seats on the benches, I decided to take a trip to the front.  I guessed there would be time after doing the shopping at Sainsbury's and collecting to Old Bat from the MS Centre yesterday morning.

And what a cop-out!  Mind you, the sea itself was quite impressive.