Back in England

Back in England for a few days, but I’m not going to rename this blog grahamnotinlebanon. Sorry and all that if you thought I’d gone for ever, but, no, I have every intention of being back in Lebanon soon.

I spent a few days in North Somerset, overlooking the Bristol Channel. So what strikes the returning ex-pat. or this one at least? Being used to the Mediterranean now, I’ve become rather accustomed to seeing the sea as blue, a bit lighter here, a bit darker there, but true blue through and through. I’d forgotten how muddy and browny-grey the water of the Bristol Channel is. And it moves seriously up and down with the tides. The range on the twice monthly Springs can be as much as fifteen meters, exposing sand banks and large tracts of darker sticky mud-like material at low-water and it’s presumably the violent stirring up of this stuff by the tidal flow that gives the Bristol channel its characteristic colour. And also makes the water gallop up an average beach at the rate of a meter every three or four minutes. Not a good idea to start wandering about at low tide or there could be a cry of “why is the sea all around me?!”

The light is different too. There’s an expression often heard west of the Pennines (yes I know they’re a bit further North) “if you can see the hills, it’s going to rain, and if you can’t then it’s raining already”. Take a look at a Constable painting, he captures this diffuse, gentle light perfectly, to the point where you can see in your mind’s eye what the landscape would be like if it were raining. A modern Santorini by comparison shows the harder, more direct Mediterranean brightness, even though all his work seems to have cloud strewn skies: who knows, maybe he just keeps running out of blue.

It sounds really corny to say it, but I’d forgotten how green this “green and pleasant land” is in early June. There is almost always some breeze here, the boughs on the tree just outside the window are moving gently. Indeed trees abound in England, all with their summer hats of foliage. Close up they look like an army of gentle green giants nodding slowly to one another. And below the trees there’s a lot more green spreading away from the sides of meanderings roads in all directions, carpeting the gently undulating countryside.

Oh and then there’s breakfast, but that’s a subject for another day. But where can someone get a good kipper in Beirut?