Grange at Sunset

When it's hot, like this, we go to the beach at sunset. On Friday we went to Grange.

The sun sets at 8.30pm. At 8.20 the sky at the horizon is a pale shade of lemon. The sun is sinking fast, a brilliant orange. A two-masted boat darkens off shore, heads bob and kiss in the shoulder-deep water.

Old men and women in swimsuits gossip at the water's edge. Towels are dragged back from the incoming tide. Everyone's waiting for sunset.

The sea is a black and primrose mosaic, the sky at the horizon the colour of toffee, a streak of orange pink cloud stretches itself thin.

The sun is three quarters below the horizon, the sky is tomato red. Fourteen seagulls fly north at a great height through deep blue air, and the first star shows.

A single light shines from one mast of the boat, a flag flaps from the other. Someone moves on the deck.

A man on the shore squats to photograph the boat against the sun's last rays

Voices mingle with the waves. Six seagulls fly north up the gulf. The tomato red sky turns first to marmalade, and then to no colour at all. People pack up their towels and children and empty drink bottles. Time to leave the black sea to itself.

Velosophy

Welcome to the first edition of Velosophy. I am David Hume, Le Bon David, as the French are pleased to call me. In this magazine my friend Voltaire and I intend to explore some of the fascinating philosophical issues that arise when a man rides a bicycle. I shall go first.

Here is a man, riding his bicycle along a beach. Or let us say, there is such a man. For now all there is to prove that there is a man riding his bicycle along a beach are the tracks that his tyres make in the sand.

And here is the sun. But he may not look at the sun. All that the man has to prove there is a sun in the sky is a shining path upon the sea, all aglitter, and the miniscule shadows of the tracks of his tyres in the sand.

And now the man is thinking of a pretty puzzle. What are the colours of the sea? He may only describe the colours in terms of the impressions that they make upon his senses. And what if he has never seen anything the colour of the colours that he sees make up the colours of the sea? He must do his best. Let us listen to his thoughts:

(But we cannot listen to his thoughts. All we have are the tracks of his bicycle tyres in the sand, and a shining path of glittering light leading from our eyes across the water to a point on the horizon that is directly below the position where we imagine that the sun he may not look at is in the sky.)

We must imagine his thoughts. We must also imagine that he is riding south, with the sun on his shoulder, if we wish him to come up with better colour images than shiny, and grey. No, he must be riding south, and look! he must be crunching these tiny white fingernail shells as he goes, crunch crackle crunch. He looks at the sea, the thick sensuous roll of foam like boiling sugar. It spreads and forms a lacy bridal train that dissolves into flecks of disappointed bubbles.

The wet sand is blue, the shallows like the juice of lemons. The water deepens fast, becoming plum. Farther out, it looks a virulent pondweed green. White fingernails of foam rise and run. Beyond the green, it's inky blacky blue.

But with what degree of certainty can he claim this to be true?

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Next week my good friend Voltaire will venture to amuse you in his new persona as The VeloDrone. Until then, happy cycling!