Random Musings

First, happy World Book Day. Read books.

Second: an experience.

We’re down in Devon, in the south of England. We’re spending our first long holiday in our caravan near the seaside. It’s a learning curve as we figure out how we move around each other and that we have to finish one job before we start another. Bukt we’re settling in and the view of the river is a good one.

Nic likes to use the gym in Westward Ho, so we drove over on Tuesday. I was going to walk on the beach while she worked out. But we hadn’t checked the tide times, and the water was crashing up against the pebble ridge. No beach to be seen.

So I walked along the long parking lot between the golf course and the pebble ridge, and then I climbed the concrete path in North Burrows simply to look at the water sliding over the pebbles below. I had my audiobook going and was utterly content.

And then I felt a presence beside me.

A guy stood there, speaking to me. I paused my book and listened. He was telling me about the beach. About the tide. About how it goes out so far, and he checked the time to see when it would go out far enough for there to be beach. He asked my name, gave me his, shook my hand. Asked where I was from, how long I was in the area.

I was polite. I didn’t tell him I knew the tides and times, since we come down a couple times a year. I didn’t ignore him and continue listening to my book. But I was wary. And it turned out that he had stopped his morning jog just to come up to talk to me on the ridge–going a good fifty or so feet out of his way to do so.

Why?

And this is what we think about as women, isn’t it? Why did he feel the need to come talk to me? Why did he want to make conversation with a stranger on her own? Maybe he was genuinely just being friendly. But I can’t help but feel like it was…odd. I’m not young. I’m an old, overweight woman with frizzy hair and tired eyes. It’s not like I’m someone you’d look at as you were jogging past and want to stop to ask for a date.

Nic and I “joked” about him being a serial killer scouting for victims. Polite women who wouldn’t tell him to go on his way? Nah. I’m too old for that too, probably.

I simply can’t get the scene out of my head. Perhaps on World Book Day I’ll use it as a scene and see where it takes me.

Be safe.