APPEARANCE AND REALITY

My usual seaside beat was busy.  Dozens of dogs.  It looked like an audition for Cruft’s.  It wasn’t.  It was those infernal dog-walking companies that collect six or seven dogs at a time, and parade them all on that narrow bay where I much prefer no company.  Knowing the little black spaniel’s disinclination to mix with other dogs, I drove away.  I headed west, along a track that I knew ended with a huge boulder slapped down in the middle of the road to prevent access to a deep and dangerous quarry. I parked the car at the boulder.  There was a rutted footpath that led down to a farmer’s field and eventually, to a remote and distant part of the beach.  I hadn’t been there before.  The field would have been impassable in summer, when the wheat would have been three feet high, but all that remained were the stalks left after the last great harvest. The field was navigable. We trudged across it.  To my great joy, I heard the soaring, cheering liquid burble of a skylark and I could see him, a good hundred feet from the ground, bursting his lungs.  There was a rain channel which ran the whole length of the field, alongside the ancient stone wall that marked the boundary between it and the next.  It was choked with debris.  To my disbelief, in the middle of nowhere, for the nearest habitation was four miles away, there seemed to be the disjecta membra of a hundred kitchens.  Along a six-foot stretch, I found an empty bag of Wagg’s Complete Dog Food, the lid from a Dairylea cheese box, a packet that had once contained straight cut oven chips, six crisp packets, a bag of Huggie’s nappies, a packet of Sunblest pancakes and, most strange of all, a page from a novel by Andrew Bridge entitled ‘Hope’s Boy.’  Every single little shrub that sat against the wall, and there was one every few yards, was festooned with the rags of plastic bags as if they had been freshly decorated for Christmas.  It dawned on me eventually that all of this jumble must have blown in from the giant landfill site abutting the railway line about a mile away.  I wondered what the farmer thought about it. I found that the only egress from his field was over a fence to which wire netting had been attached, presumably to prevent sheep from escaping.  I lifted up the dog and dropped her over, but it was some minutes before I could gain enough purchase on the wire-netting to clamber over myself.  I found, to my surprise, that I was quite out of breath.  The beach was half a mile away over rough grassland, with myriad rabbit-holes to trip up the unwary. We had to drop down a couple of feet from a fringe of sand dunes to reach the beach itself.  It was entirely deserted.  It was bliss.  It was Christopher Marlowe’s ‘Infinite riches in a little room’. We disturbed a raft of redshank, who flew away trumpeting shrilly, and a couple of lazy curlew, who drifted away with only a low warbling bleat to voice their displeasure.  I sat down on an ancient tree trunk that lay on the stony shore and looked around me.  The sand was almost grey, not shining golden, and was meagre.  Stones predominated and beyond them, antediluvian rocks.  The sea was a long way away, and I could only just make out a whisper as the waves rolled onto the rocks.  None of the stones were bigger than my fist, and were of all shapes and colours.  I wondered how they had got there in the first place.  In the distance, the virgin white of the lighthouse dazzled my eyes in the low morning sun.  A couple of rock pipits pranced about in the dried seaweed covering some of the stones, and I could swear I saw a wheatear flying on its way to the farmer’s field. Far out to sea, a single diminutive yacht chugged determinedly along in the vast expanse of grey ocean.  The dog lay at my feet and chewed contentedly on an old stick she had found. I wondered how the small island of Great Britain could conceivably contain 65 million people when the nearest person to me would be at least a couple of miles away, working on the landfill site, or travelling on a main-line rail express to an appointment in either of the two capital cities. A phalanx of lesser black-backed gulls skimmed low over the waves, occasionally dipping their wings like Spitfires to get a better view of the marine life below.  I felt cold after a while, and we turned back.  There was a stile further on that made it easier to get into the field next to the farmer’s.  A sign read: ‘There are sheep in this field.  Keep your dog on a lead.  Dogs worrying sheep will be shot.’  I looked down at the little spaniel.  It would be hard pressed to worry a hamster, never mind a sheep, but I did as I was bid.  It was then I noticed the sprightly old lady in an emerald-blue track suit.  She was carrying what I took to be an Ordnance Survey map.  She was behaving rather oddly, zig-zagging hither and thither, occasionally stopping to refer to her map.  I came across her on the scarcely-defined path. “Are you lost?” I asked. “Good gracious, no,” she replied. “I’m mapping fences.  They don’t appear on our latest charts.  I’ve got this GPS watch and I’m taking note of all these fences.” “Are you from a rambling club?” I asked.  “Orienteering.  Great fun.  Need to move on.  On a tight schedule. Goodbye.” She walked quickly away, towards the lighthouse. At one stage she actually broke into a sharp trot.  We manoeuvred the fence and the farmer’s field with little difficulty and returned to the car.  A Council van pulled up alongside. “Morning,” I said. “You’re a bit off the beaten track.” “You’re right there,” said the workman.  “I’ve got to gather up all the bits of dead and broken wood between here and the beach and set fire to it.  I’ve got some paraffin in the van.” And there was I, thinking my Council Tax was badly spent.