The fishing town. Charles Roberts

 

Low grey clouds cling to the hill tops, the persistent rain and drizzle, drips from the hanging leaves of the trees and bushes and slowly soaks anything it comes into contact with.  It was the sort of day where the very atmosphere clings to you like a wet blanket seeping through your clothing and into your very bones.  The sun does not show herself on days like this as though she is ashamed and in hiding.  Bands of light and dark grey clouds move slowly across the sky and the drizzle turns to rain and back with the bands.

 The angry dark slate greeny grey sea pounds against the concrete sea wall, which protects the small, former, fishing town, turns it back on itself in torments of a mixture of dirty white foam and sand.  The three or four small fishing boats, which are all that are left of the once bustling industry, are drawn up a slipway and are resting above and behind the concrete sea wall; draped with tarpaulins to try and keep the rain out.

Metal rails run through a hole in the wall, and down to the sea.  It is on these rails that the lifeboat is launched and drawn back up into its building.  They have been there since before the wall was built, before the sandy beach was swept away by the many storms which batter this part of the coast. Once you could have walked for miles along that wide expanse of beach, but now there is a mere sliver of sandy beach left clinging precariously to the base of the sea wall.

The rain runs in torrents down the steep streets and runs out of the many drains in the sea wall and falls in graceful arcs into the foaming sea below.  Sea birds sit hunched up on the rooves of the houses, their heads tucked into their shoulders, they will go hungry today as the dank day is not good for fishing or finding scraps holiday makers leave behind.  The only sound they can hear is the pattering of rain on the tilled rooves and on the cobbled streets below them.

No one moves in those streets, it is the type of day when the people hide in front of their fires and either listen to the radio or watch the television.  The shops, although open, will do no trade, or very little; a brave soul might run out to the bakery for a loaf, or the corner shop for a can of beans, but otherwise no one will set foot outside their front door unless they really have to.