I slammed my laptop shut and closed my eyes. It kept whirring, my brain too. Full of spam, too many tabs open. Spend enough time looking at screens and you forget how you used to think. Social media burrows in to the brain until those vile characters you wish you’d never wasted time laying eyes on pop up in a dream, waking you up with a scream.

Time to de-spam and restart, those emails can wait. I grabbed kit stowed sadly since the last adventure and frantically flung it in the car. I needed to be on the water. Immediately. No time to think, the bags amassed as I remembered what kit was needed, one piece at a time. Oh God, I realized with horror, I’ll still be here getting ready, faffing, at least fifteen minutes from now. Glancing at the clock, I cursed and grabbed random food off the shelf. All I had time for was porridge and porridge would do, because eating isn’t living, not in my view. So much time spent planning, getting ready to live. That’s how it’s felt of late. Well, I’m ready to live, even at the expense of tomorrow, because now is all there is.

Boat on the roof, I arrived at the sea and was on the water by seven thirty. The first time I’d been back in my expedition boat since Kirton repaired it, it felt like slipping in to an old pair of boots. No plan, I hugged the shore and just paddled. Dead end thoughts whirred on until they ran out of momentum, blown in to oblivion by the salty sea air. For a while my mind ached for some instant gratification, craved for a hit of dopamine, some of the stimulating content it’s become used to devouring in recent times. As with any addiction, the initial test of abstinence is most taxing. It grows easier with time until you one day you realize with great joy that it’s been some time since you even felt a longing for that thing you once couldn’t do without. What else could I give up and no longer miss I wondered?

High above me on top of the golden cliffs sheep grazed, aware only of their idyllic reality. Waves rumbled up the shingle and then I was across the bay approaching a town nestled in the shelter of two green hills. The first lights twinkled in the dusk and the moons reflection danced like a mackerel on the end of a line in the water by my side. This show is put on every night, yet most nights I neglect it.

A stiff breeze blew down the valley and my gaze followed it out to sea. An image of being out there on the steely grey sea flashed through my mind and with darkness falling I sat tenser, my senses dialed up. Heading for the charcoal black cliff, eventually I came to a sweeping pebbly cove where driftwood lay in the lines of winter storms and large boulders sat crouched in the moonlight wherever the waves have left them. Sea kale sprouts from the top of the beach and a thick scrub grows right down to the pebbles, impenetrable apart from some holes made by animals I assume.

I clambered out and hobbled over the pebbles, my feet soft from a winter in socks. Tent set up and wooly jumper on, I ate some porridge by the light of a glowstick. A restless wind pawed at my tent and I didn’t sleep well, used to the comfort of a mattress. But eventually it calmed and when I woke to the hot sun streaming in to my tent, I was revived, full of life again, alive.