The sea – cold, wet, salty. But not as mucky as it was pre-sewage plant. Beachcombing is nicer without the ‘thingies’.  No more does the sea gurgle and slurp beneath the big slab in my garden. Those old pipes connect to the new pump.

The sounds of the sea whispering and roaring and its colours are uncountable. I wish I’d kept a diary for the last 19 years. A sea diary, I mean.

Textures, too. Silk – yes. Oily, inky. But did you see it that day when it was a giant bar-code? Must have started smooth. Then a breeze combed across the whole lot. And then was it streaked with a fork?

Going to the seaside was a treat years ago. But why? Many reasons, but the one I prefer just now is my sense of its largeness and its amiability. Irrational? Yet to a small child on sunny sands, that benign, salty wetness is safe. Only the wasps and the adults spoil things.

And now? Obviously the sea is far from being a friend. A companion it is, though: has moods, a huge wardrobe, a capacity to delight, to alarm and its own musical conversation. It offers food too. If only it could also cook.

A view from Clunes – by Jill Campbell, 19 years in Cromarty.