Sunday 26th September
Day 158
We are sitting on the sheltered steps of a fourteenth century quay having our lunch. The sun is hot on my face. Behind us, seagulls swoop over three sailing boats tethered in a turquoise sea. We have walked down a vertical cobbled street made from beach pebbles to get here. When Charles Kingsley - who wrote ‘The Water Babies’ - lived here over a hundred and fifty years ago he wouldn’t have paid £12.50 in a car park to enter his own village - Clovelly.
My husband’s baguette is piled high with crayfish tails. I am biting into a hot smoked mackerel roll smothered in a horrible mayonnaise. We are remembering this day twenty four years ago - the day before our wedding.
I said, ‘I was probably rolling out pastry for the quiches, or having a panicky cigarette in the garden. And your mother said it was unlucky to see you but in the evening you came round to my sister’s house and and I cut your hair in the kitchen.’
It was all ahead of us then. We didn’t know our six year old bridesmaid, my sweet niece, would make this her wedding day too, twenty two years later. A date we are so happy to share.
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