today is a working at home day, again.  With schools closed until the new term, we are once again phoning, messaging and emailing all day long.  It is fine, we are lucky to have a job that transfers to home working, and an employer willing to support us with the right technology to do so.  However a down side of home working is that when things are getting on top of you, you can feel at bit closed in.  With no colleagues close by to have a brew and talk things through, sometimes your head can feel like exploding.

This is when I am doubly lucky.  For just fifteen minutes walk from my home office is the coast, the beach and the waves.  Today a lunchtime yomp down through town and the park, and over the bridge to the sea was exactly what was needed.  I decided to rest a while, and found a very special seat.  Our lovely friend lost her fight with this awful virus back in the Spring, and the bench installed by her family is a perfect place to rest a while.  As ever I touch her name on the silver plaque and say hello.  Then I, as she did many times before, I look across the sea.

The sky was very blue today, with fluffy white clouds, the winter sun surprisingly warm on my back.  I look across the water at the majestic windmills, ever turning, doing a synchronised dance above the waves.  The size and power diminished by distance, they stand tall and proud.  Renewable energy.  How fitting I thought, for this view, this sea, this bench and memories of my friend, well they do exactly the same thing.  They renew my energy.

I have always loved the sea, and as I head back home to work once more, I am reminded of how this water, these waves, this beach, well they have always been here.  Back over a hundred years ago when my Nina was born in sight of this same sea, it was all there, the waves predictably washing the sand twice a day.  I like to think of that, of her perhaps paddling, feeling the sand between her toes, and then I think of my Granddaughter, and how in time her children or Grandchild may also paddle in this sea.

Life goes on, and although we like to think we have all the answers, I expect the wisdom of the waves is that nothing is new, the world keeps turning.

Back home, windswept and breathless from climbing the hill, I am nonetheless feeling more able to get on with life. My energy is renewed, and I am counting my blessings.