Fighters over Weston-super-Mare

The second summer day here of a predicted four: temperatures were in the mid-twenties and there was not a cloud in the sky. Clare and myself took my mother to what we believed would be a pristine Weston-super-Mare to enjoy the sun, sea and sand. Approximately 7,000 other people had the same idea as the beach panorama illustrates.

The crowded beach at Weston today

The water was receding on an ebbing tide making paddling impossible: kinda irrelevant, as newspapers had reported that the water was contaminated with sewage. Alternative entertainment was provided from the air as a couple of Spitfires in their D-Day colours zoomed over the beach and did tricks - you can just see them in the picture below out at sea.

WW2 Fighters over the sea

After three hours watching the good people of Bristol showing far too much of their reddened, spherical bodies we decided to move on. I should mention that the two women I had brought with me were the most covered on the beach. They could not have exposed less flesh to the sun's eager ministrations if they had been zealous adherents to the third Abrahamic religion.

Thankfully, we were soon basking in the cool air of our neighbourhood Waitrose, that secular temple of middle-class modernity.

The steps before they're cemented

I might have mentioned that Clare is looking at me with unusual (even unheard of) adoration as I show off my artisan skills by building a step for the cat out of his cat-flap in the back door.

I pointed out to her that (a) I am a very poor artisan who had to look up the difference between cement and mortar, and (b) my intellectual achievements are to my manual skills as the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai is to a crème caramel. Yet this compelling argument counts for naught with the big eyes. Women - I will never understand them. But I do recall she is rather fond of the cat ...