4/365: A Whale Sighting

Margot Tenenbaum//Francis Bacon//Chips.

A Humpback Whale’s spotted at high tide just off the coast, close enough for a picture when it obligingly lifts its tail. We miss it. Ever the opportunist, I realise this is enough to get the children out the house for at least the duration of the holidays, why don’t we go on a whale hunt, I say, like a less poetic Michael Rosen. But the whale is gone. Online, there’s a great deal of debate over the whale, if it’s lost or taking the scenic route. I know nothing about whales, other the things I learnt reading one of the most curious books of 2022, Peter Riley’s Strandings. But this whale is not stranded. Out of bed and telling myself I’m better, I meet a friend for coffee and a walk by the sea, empty now of whales, seals too, only a sail boat for company and the biting cold when we round the corner to the beach. The local bookshop is closing. Everything half price. Feel like an opportunist as I ransack its emptying shelves. If I’d paid full price at least as often…come away with a fragmented Bacon biography in letters and statements, for work I say, a Michael Stipe photo book, the second volume of the Dylan biographies for the 12 year old and 39 Steps for the 10 year old. Pub to warm up, forgotten how it feels to be this cold, would not survive for long in Scotland now. Home, The Royal Tenenbaums to keep up the Wes Anderson streak, try not to think about school uniforms and packed lunches and inboxes and any of the rest, just this, Margot and her excellent hair, those furs that never seem to have met a moth all of their days.