“I must go down to the sea again, to the sea and the lonely sky …”

The opening line of John Masefield’s poem “Sea Fever” often occurs to me as I look out of my window, for from it, I can see the sea. When I lived in a basement flat in Dyke Road I couldn’t see the sea at all; in fact, I couldn’t even see the street. There is a part of Dyke Road by St Nicholas’s where you do get to se the sea, and something about the geography and the layout of the street means that it looks as though the sea is gigher up than you, which much impressed my children when they first came to visit. But now I have moved to the lower slopes of West Hill I have a view of a patch of sea every time I sit at my desk, and this pleases me, although it sometimes acts as a rebuke. Because what I am doing is looking at it, and not walking by it.

I wonder if this is means I have turned into a true Brightonian. When I lived on Dyke Road I only rarely went to the sea, because I lived at the very summit of West Hill and walking down to the shore meant a long uphill climb back home, and hills and I don’t get on very well. So now I live much nearer the Channel, do I go down to visit it every day? After all, living by the sea is a privilege. People go daffy trying to buy properties near the sea. (Well, ok, maybe not all places by the sea are desirable. I have a friend who lives in Southend and, believe me, you don’t even want to go there, let alone buy somewhere there.) But I don’t go down to the sea, to the lonely sea and the sky. I just look at it and admire its changing moods from afar. It’s never dull, even when it’s flat, as it is now (and blue: it’s a sunny day).

It makes me think of the place I lived in in London for ten years: because my flat, and the house it was in, was a shambles, it was the last affordable place in Central London. And all of London’s galleries and museums were within walking distance. Did I walk to them? No? Did I even take public transport to them? Also no. Because I knew I could walk there whenever I wanted, I felt no pressure to go there. And so it is with the seaside: it’s for visitors. And I wonder also if the view I have of a patch of sea, and only that, rem,inds me of my childhood, when we knew that the real holiday was beginning: when we could see, through a gap in the trees, the twinkling blue of the Cornish Atlantic. And on blustery, bright sunny days the sea, from my window, looks just the same as it did from my dad’s Vauxhall when I was 10. It’s close enough. 

Besides, it’s full of poo these days.