The people were as intriguing as the landscapes this evening. Everyone was coupled up, enjoying the quiet change of colors, some quiet conversation, and the warm summer air.
Bournemouth F&D Redux
Last year, our challenge was to get into the Facebook Album. This year, it was more about enjoying music, food and conversation. The Food and Drink Festival was back in town.
Summer gets into gear in England in July and August. The roads clog with cars (queues), the beaches fill to overflowing (heaving), and I start looking for street parties (fêtes).
It’s fun, a chance to visit market towns across the South West, with a familiar cast of vendors (Marshwood Vale Cider Company) and the occasional charming local tradition (’barrow races).
Although the w.wezen suggests that I’m FOMO-tivated by the What’s On calendar, I prefer to think it’s an escape from the week’s work and a relaxed afternoon out.
The B-F&D draws around 40 cooking tents serving everything from pasta to paella, venison to tapas, pulled pork to polenta. The quality is generally pretty high, and the prices around £5 per plate, similar to the Taste Of… American equivalents.
The strategy is to pick up a couple of samplers and camp out in the beer tent, where we munch through cooking demos, people watch, and listen to live music.
Alongside, there’s the new Seafront to explore, a multi-million pound renovation of the approach to the landmark Pier. I was particularly looking forward to the sub-project that was to reunite the town’s river with the sea.
The winding river though the city park had stopped just short of the beaches, diving underground at the concrete apron of the promenade. This was to have been resurfaced and
channeled to recreate the historic river’s mouth (somewhat in miniature, but I still envisioned salmon leaping upstream).
Disappointingly, it all turns out to be virtual reality. A winding line of fountains now marks the river’s course, and copper fish are impressed into the concrete. It’s all a bit understated (underwhelming), although the children seem to love it.
A month of travel and change
I am always surprised at how quickly circumstances can change. At the end of May, the immediate environment seemed stable and future prospects were good. The businesses were reaching long-established goals and I was looking forward to having a week back in Maastricht to sort the car and the mail, visit a couple of mooie dorpen, and catch up with disconnected friends.
All of that went into reverse on the way to Dover Ferry Terminal. The phone rang, the news broke, and I turned back west. 36 hours later, I was on a plane to the US, offline for the next two weeks.
The flow follows its own channel.
On returning to the UK, the house was in turmoil. The kids had broken up, Greek Mom was quitting her job, and the whole group was making sudden plans to return to Greece.
‘Perhaps good to wait the currency crisis out? I suggested.
όχι: an emphatic No that foreshadowed the vote. They were packed and gone within days.
The house has reverted to quiet, emptiness, with just the cardiologist there when she’s not traveling.
During the days, I plunge into work and travel to meetings. I delivered a pitch to the Kent Investors Network 
at the Medway Yacht Club, a personally aspirational venue. It lies on the River Medway, nine miles off the Thames across from the historic Chatham Dockyards. I’ve marked the spot for a future visit, then rambled the banks for a couple of hours taking in the tideflats and sailboats as I practiced my delivery.
I visited Cambridge as well, celebrating the MBE class graduation with a wonderful dinner at Clare Hall. The conversations and speeches were fun and insightful as always. It’s good to meet colleagues and to share stories and contacts ahead of the summer breaks.
Weekends were spent traveling as well, sometimes across Poole Swanage and Sandbanks, other times in 
London or Reading.
The Tate Modern is presenting geometric works by Agnes Martin, a New Mexico-based abstractionist. While the colors were reminiscent of the vivid desert hues in Santa Fe / O’Keefe works, the representations were finely detailed parallel lines and grids. Neither mosaic puzzles nor moire hallucinations, it was hard to find significance or meaning. I only offer respect that someone put that much effort into achieving that precision in their drafting.
Time would be better spent among the Hepworth sculptures across the river.
The summer crowds are arriving in Dorset, filling the choice bluffs, café’s, beaches (and parking). Not one to compete with that at midday, I’ve begun to take mornings along the water with coffee and a cake. 
My days are starting slowly anyway, musty motivation following restless nights to an early rise.
It took a few weeks before I had the heart to pick up the camera and my #100HappyDays project on Instagram. But I’m back to posting two a day, if only to remind myself how the vistas across water and rocks, sailboats and sunsets, remain constant, lovely, and familiar alongside life’s unpredictable story.