Kenopsia
Seeing behind the curtain isn’t a sorrow
It’s mid-November, the time when autumn is battling to hold on against the advance of winter. Today there’s a truce between them, the crisp blue skies and a bright low sun of a clear winter day, but the warmth of autumn still lingers. There are no cold Arctic winds blowing in off the North Sea as I approach the beach at Bacton, just calm as I close in on the expanses of beach, sea and sky.
Bacton’s a small town, not much more than a village, but like so many places along England’s coastline it clusters around a caravan park. I see these groups of long low roofs almost every time I go walking near the East Anglian coast, permanent static parks with occasional touring caravans, motorhomes and campervans scattered into the mix. I can see how this place would look in the heights of summer, those June weekends snatched away from work, those long school holiday weeks through July and August. Parents roasting on the beach, kids squealing and screaming as they run up and down the sand, in and out of the wide calm sea. There’d be a queue out of the chip shop, a crush of people around the freezers in the little shop, arguing over which ice creams to buy.
Today it’s calm and quiet. I don’t quite have the beach and the town to myself, but there’s no wait for my lunchtime chips, no buzz around the shop and while I don’t…
