High Tide	04:49 (2.00m)
Low Tide	10:18 (1.10m)
High Tide	17:19 (2.10m)
Low Tide	23:33 (1.00m)

Sea temperature: 5.7
Sea conditions: Calm
Weather: thick fog, cooler - air temperature 4.6
Joined by: The Poet who was not expected as it was cold and foggy - he thinks he may have the bug
Topics of conversation:
The temperature drop - the air temperature had been 11 degrees yesterday and the sun had been out most of the day but today the forecast is for fog/mist all day and it certainly looked set. I forgot my phone but photos would have been pointless anyway as all we could see was grey, no differentiation between the sea and the sky, just a gradual fade from brownish grey to greyish grey. The BBC weather forecast showed a pretty similar colour palette. I suspect I may become slightly more weather obsessed now that I have my very own thermometer - a present from DK - thanks DK! I can use it for the sea, air and cooking, as its range is so great: -20 to 200 degrees C.

Seals - yesterday The Canadian's Wife and I had walked further down the beach from our swimming spot on the hard sand at low tide, the water was like glass, smooth and hardly showing any evidence of movement, except as her chocolate lab approached the water. Then, from nowhere, a seal bobbed up in front of her and they were almost nose to nose - perhaps a meter apart. The dog moved towards the seal into the shallows and, as if it wanted her to follow, the seal turned and flipped its tail at her playfully but at this stage both the dog and owner became a little nervous - it was a very big seal. We carried on walking and it kept level with us, surfacing more often than not till we turned back. It was magical, the still water adding to the surreal experience of walking with a seal. The Poet told of a seal he had encountered in Barnes, where the slipways alongside the Thames make perfect basking spots for the seals. He found himself chatting to one, as close as we sat to each other on the beach this morning. He said he spoke in the language that we all (yes all of us, even those who are superficially cooler than cooler) reserve for our dogs. I'm not sure whether he knew why he used that language to talk to a seal.
This led on to a discussion about The Pirate teaching his students about Muhammed, who is the seal of the prophets - the last prophet, but I won't repeat the detail here for fear of fatwas.
Goan mussels - DK and Legs had tried a new recipe from Madhur Jaffrey which had been a huge success and so I am going to check our 4 Jaffrey books when I get a moment to see if we have it, otherwise I shall checking this link: Mussels in Thrisi  it sounds wonderful. We all get our mussels from different places and there followed a long discussion about whose were the best; Bancaster mussels brought in from North Norfolk by our fishermen on the harbour; the ones delivered to the Anchor, which come from the Deben: those which The Pirate used to pick off the harbour wall here. He said he hadn't seen any since 1976, when a local, bad tempered Bunkum had told him that he'd be going home in a box if he ate them. Not all the Bunkums are bad tempered - in fact he's the only one, the others are delightful.
Scrabble - The Pirate's Wife and The Poets sister-in-law are experts, being able to lock the board down and use three letter words to score more than most can with a whole rack. I've never been any good, although my grandmother was an expert who would attempt to insert swear words whenever she could. In fact I think the last time I played was probably with my grandmother, who died in 1987, so I certainly won't be considering taking either of them on. It's amazing the things you find out on the beach in the mornings.
Englebert Humperdink - he's this year's entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, which we all agreed was ludicrous. DK knew him in the day and had some tales to tell about his hypochondria, which was legendary and reported by his camp assistant who would refer to the antibiotics needed to treat imaginary infections as strapyourclipson and fetchyourbikein. Apparently he's been picked because he'll be the oldest contestant ever, although he is quoted as having said he thinks his age has nothing to do with it. His musical ability certainly hasn't either. None of us were clear about the selection process, especially why the BBC make the decision but we suspect that there are very few who would accept the challenge, Enge seems to be delighted.

Inevitably we also discussed the death of Davy Jones, another of DK's circle "before he was a monkey" (oh...perhaps that should be Monkee). I'd only been watching an interview with him this weekend - he looked so well. I remember being totally devoted to him as a child, he was the 'cute one' in the band, as per the formula of cute one, wild one, head boy, shy one and of course - gay one. I'm not sure which one DK is... DK had been engaged to an identical twin at one point and Davy Jones had been seeing the other one, we joked that they probably both dated the same one at some point, without knowing. Everyone agreed that he had retained his looks and aged gracefully, as has DK, unlike Cliff Richard, whose face is wrong and had certainly been fiddled with, even though he denies it apparently.

RIP Davy Jones

 Famous people growing old gracefully - Or not - There have been a number of shots of Raquel Welch doing the rounds this week and she has looked stunning, clearly not entirely natural, but more so than some of her peers. Joan Rivers really beats them all with her stretched and filled face. We wondered how Marylyn would have looked in her 70's, there's bound to be someone who has taken shots of her and aged them - I'm not interested enough to google that though. The Poet and I had enjoyed My Week With Marylyn and I'd read about Michelle Williams using a bottom double, as hers is too slim and perfect and at this point I was accused of turning the conversation "girly". About time...

Audi TTs - friends are taking delivery of one today and had promised to take me for a spin this evening, but in this weather I suspect I might not be as keen as it's convertible, even though I've always fancied one myself. It's always hard to find a fantasy car that has style and quality and the TT certainly has some of the required elements. We talked about their ability to stick to the roads as I had experienced when driven through blizzards at high speed by my ex business partner. She'd had a fling with a well known sports personality and we talked about this until The Pirate said that DK and I should write a gossip column (The Pirate's knowledge/interest in the celebrity circuit is stuck in the middle ages) but the blog will suffice.
Violence on screen - The Pirate's Wife has kindly viewed the new ITV drama Those Who Kill, starring Troels from The Killing for us and I'll be watching that next week on her recommendation. She and I both have a higher violence threshold than our husbands, but even I had found Coriolanus a little stomach churning. It's visceral and unadorned, with shots in big close up of people being shot through the head and a very high body count but its still a wonderful adaptation and Babs has found that it had such a profound effect on her that she has returned to the original text to get even more from the experience.