Candle wax smoke and the laughter of student parties. A smooth ginger cat stalks the walls and corrugated rooftops of sheds and garages, criss-crossing all the way down the back gardens to Salisbury Road.

Sea fret prickling the skin on my arms, cars move silently into cool mist over Laira Bridge. Four magpies rocking in a tree, tails flashing blue-black, plump white breasts. Greenfinches, a martin sunbathed golden on the Ocean Maid. Greasy brown slick, crusted bladderwrack, a flock of starlings follow each other from fence top to post to playing field.

Turquoise dream: the surface heaving a patchwork of azure fission, shimmering liquid sapphire, rocking back and forth beneath my hands, the tiny white chalky nodules of sea creatures, small waves skim the surface like dolphins.

Then it rains. Sky: a grey-blue painting smeared by a cold shower into blotched islands, the new moon is an invisible puncture-mark, curved one day old.

A speckled brown frog rests on a pebble under a primula leaf. I take two photos of the crescent cut into the western sky over Cobblestone Parlour, with Venus pinned to the right and swifts in the air till after 10.