Sandbanks in the Sun

A trip to Dorset to see my family can involve going to Poole Cemetery to tidy up my grandparents' and father's graves: Mum would do it, but can't at the moment. She warned me they would be in a terrible state yesterday, but they weren't, the dry weather having shrivelled all the weeds that otherwise make a nuisance of themselves among the pebbles.

On the way between there and Mum's the sun glinted across Poole Harbour, the expensive apartments and houses of Banks Road slightly hazy beyond the windsurfers. The buildings periodically change as fashions do, but they maintain their long, low line strung out along the sandy spit that closes the mouth of the Harbour from the north. On the eastern side are deep sands and waves; on the western flank, the tranquil waters that stretch all across to Brownsea Island, and that was where we typically took up our seaside positions when I was small. Going back to Sandbanks is always an exercise in the pleasures of memory as well as experience.