Crab

Returning from the swing up the north beach, walked the handsome new pier to the Bembridge lifeboat. Some moaning from the resident lifeboatman about the rusting of the steel pillars, rusting which presumably only appeared after the pier had won some herito-achitectural prize.

Back for lunch at another successful seaside eatery, the 'Lifeboat View Café, housed in what amounted to a large, pretty shed with lots of windows and doing well enough to run to a team of young lady waitresses. Rock cake to start, to keep me going, followed by crab sandwiches. Very good, but I made the mistake of ordering a portion of chips to supplement the sandwiches, when, as it turned out, I would have done better to have two sandwiches.

After which it was the turn of the south beach, different from, but as good as the north beach. Sundry swifts, swallows and egrets to supplement the seagulls, crows and pigeons. One horse and one very badly behaved dog, the owners of which did not seem to have a clue. The second example of a badly behaved dog on a beach.

Stopped off at the Bembridge church on the way home, built in the early nineteenth century and where I was struck by the memorial illustrated above, it being unusual, in my experience at least, to have a first world war memorial for an individual, albeit an officer in a crack regiment, decorated in this way. I wondered what the standing of the flag was, looking, as it did, very like the sort of thing hung up in cathedrals or regimental museums.

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