It’s one of those beautiful early spring days where you see some people in shorts and t-shirts and others in coats and hats because the day starts cool but gets quite warm as the sun shows its face. As a respite from checking out all the funky shops in Brighton Rikka (my wife) and I retire to the haven of a café in some gardens near the Pavilion. As she goes over to buy some lunch I survey the scene. There is an accordian player dressed in Parisian gear (striped top, black beret) entertaining us and a little boy is talking to the pigeons which perch on the huge tree above us. ‘Why won’t you come down?’ he calls out to them; when we arrived he had been chasing them on the grass and they had obviously got fed up with the game. Sitting on the plastic table in front of me are three twigs with puffs of cotton at the end – bought at a florist in the Lanes.

I’ve never actually seen a cotton plant before and I marvel at how nature produces this magical flower from which man makes cloth which we then wear. Rikka returns from the counter with baked potatoes for our lunch. You can tell when food has been prepared with care and, as simple as this snack is, it falls into that category and I am grateful. Life is good. I think about the gig last night, the walk along the pier with morning mist over the sea, the shopping and then this relaxing park scene and realise that everything changes except the awareness which watches it all happening. A line comes to me:

         ‘Life is a series of moments linked together by the idea of you.’

I tell it to Rikka, and she searches for a scrap of paper in her bag to write it down on so I don’t forget it. Suddenly I hear a splat! One of the pigeons has crapped all over my leg!

26th March 2011