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This is the technicolour tourist version of my street, on one of the handful of days when the sky is blue and dry and the wind moves only as fast as a cat brushing past my ankles.
Not like the days when the wind from the moors darts its way to the sea through many fingered lanes, and turns the planes of my face to cold metal edges. It does not speak of the weariness inside my elbows from carrying too many shopping bags at once, to save having to make a second, a third trip back to the top of the hill where a car can be parked. In the winter storms, we can be cut off for days on end, safe from the lashing waves behind our thick stone walls, but the windows rattle and I pile old blankets against them, mostly in vain as the drafts will always send their tendrils through to find me.
Julia K. Davies, in Be careful what you wish for. “I count the number of days that are really like the tourist dream.”
Parmanu 