TIDEMARKS; COMMEMORATION, OTHER MATTERS.

 A December afternoon on the North Yorks coast. An open ended project about cycles of behaviour and celebration, about continuity, is in need of a jumping off point from a  world very different to one it began in. 

Currently, distance and safety form a tight weave. (We share a tier, and I am careful). The Horngarth when it returns it will be behind new flood defences. On land, old elemental uncertainties have returned; Undercurrents and eddys pull us away from each other and weave us into bundles of 6.  The Elsinore , one of the centres of the towns folk scene, is set to re-open, hidebound and under  management that took over just 8 weeks before lockdown....others shut as night draws in, others light their windows to help us keep them in  mind....Neon reindeer cascade down the slope behind the Star.. 

In Scarborough I record a chat about the project with Chris Curtis for Coast and County radio. Next-door-but- one is the Koda coffeshop, easing into its day with a  turnover strong enough to make me put a chat about an event back for later.  over the road is Record Revivals, a Scarborough institution run by a dear pal from the heart of the town's music scene who got the bleep the day before and is holed up for the week.  On Vernon Road a plaque is going up, to commemorate another great survival against the elements; a great local band's flyposter that lasted across decades in a safe haven inland  from the seafrets and the rain.  It goes up unannounced, largely unwitnessed and frankly, unsecured.  Like the poster, it will last as long as it is allowed to. 

Up and down the foreshore and the staith gift shops are selling masks, clearly labelled non-medical, with Unions Jacks picked out in beads. This while Johnson feigns resignation in the face of supposed EU intransigence. It will take more than a bit of cloth to protect us from his self serving whims.

The Elsinore's day stared slowly with gallows humour and nice people hoping for the best over Christmas. Walking up Flowergate later, things looked all but normal. 

Whitby grew because it was possible to live and work in the harbour, and the Horngarth is a tangible link with the first attempts to do so,  first in the shadow of the abbey, and then under  various forms of obligation and civic duty. 

This year there are new flood defences in the north harbour, and there were fears about how high these would be...had the service gone ahead this year it would have been behind barriers, boards. False alarm; the new wall has a metal rail on top ,but the view into the water below  is unimpeded.  2019's planting was a good one; a single stave still stands, just about. In 2021 those elemental uncertainties over time and tide will reach  into the air itself . 

Out on ye. Out on Ye. Out on ye.

.