Breaking Waves — An Elegant Sufficiency

My birthday today, so it was my privilege to decide where I'd like to go.

“Margate”, I said. My ignorance of distances and the general geography of this corner of the country was revealed when I learned that it would be an hour and a half's drive to get there. Margate is a “traditional” seaside town in Kent, somewhat faded and well past its heyday. There is, however, a modern gallery there, named after one of my favourite artists, JMW Turner and it was for that reason I wished to visit.

We'd heard the storm during the night and woke to heavy wind and rain. We might have muttered something about it being “Turner weather”, for many of his paintings reflect similar conditions to those through which we drove.

The storm was in full force when we arrived in Margate, battering this corner of Kent with rain, high winds and heavy seas. Thankfully, the gallery has an adjacent car park and it was there we headed.

Hmm. To reach the car park one had to drive around the gallery on the sea side, past the lifeboat station. That was fine, except the road was under water and the waves were crashing over the sea wall. Not only did I feel anxious about leaving the car in such a vulnerable place, it soon dawned on me that we'd have to walk back through all of that to reach the entrance of the gallery too. We did what others were doing and turned around to find somewhere else to park the car.

After a short drive around with no success and beginning to think this had been a bad idea, we headed back to the harbourside, for there was another place to park cars on the “right side” of the sea wall. In fact, we could see vehicles there looking relatively sheltered.

So there it was. We put on our raingear and sat a while, waiting for a wave to crash over the wall before leaping out before the next one came, then quickly made our way along the leeward fence, somehow managing to reach the entrance without a soaking.