High Tide	02:05 (2.50m)
Low Tide	07:58 (0.80m)
High Tide	14:21 (2.50m)
Low Tide	20:22 (0.80m)

Sea temperature: not taken - my thermometer is playing up, DK and I discussed replacement batteries but I am nervous about opening the back in case it is no longer waterproof. 
Sea conditions: mill pond 
Weather: grey but warm
Joined by: The Usual Suspects, all of them at once, which meant 10 of us on the beach this morning and 7 dogs (including Trigger, who is staying with The Bridge Captain). The Pirate and I muttered darkly about it feeling rather crowded, but it's great that the weather is holding out long enough for everyone to get the benefit of these beautiful mornings.
Topics of conversation:
The LE arrived with Alf, and he's not hers. She often takes him on the lead to The Pirate's house on the way back to save him the trouble, it's the newbie's job (I graduated last year, when The Poet took over and now it's her turn - obviously DK is too grand for such trivialities) but today Alf made it to the beach before The Pirate with a great big grin on his face. When we all looked perplexed The LE led us to believe he'd been for a sleep over with Jagger, who still isn't allowed out. She's making up for this by feeding him tripe and seemed concerned that there was still a whiff of it about her, not the case, and we know as the girls went in arm in arm in our matching black swimming hats, doing dance stepping in the shallow water.

Stay

Who do you think you are (the series) - someone, I forget who, had seen Marianne Faithful's version and Sara asked if she ended up finding out that her family are Jewish as she has a friend who works on the production, which they refer to as "Jew do you think you are"! It's true - so often this is the case and following the episode of Simon Shama's 'Story of the Jews' this week, in which he looks at the influence of Jewish writers, cinematographers and musicians, it seems rather inevitable. I'd particularly enjoyed an episode I'd seen with Minnie Driver, whose unconventional life pattern was found to be reflected back generations. 
The definition of true Autumn - The Pirate and I discussed this and tried to decide if it was when the clocks go back, the Equinox or September 24th - Michaelmas - as this is when the cows come off the fields. It's also when you are supposed to stop eating blackberries and our reasons for doing so highlighted our different upbringings. His Mother always used to say you couldn't eat them after Michaelmas eve because that was when the Devil spat on them, whereas my Grandmother told me it was the witches who wee'd on them. 

The Artist's sartorial elegance - it's been apparent recently that The Artist enjoys dressing up, we should already have realised this by her beach attire, which isn't what you'd call conventional (this morning she swam in black thermal base layers, with long sleeves, turquoise gardening gloves and a sequinned beret) and this morning I discretely told her that she hadn't removed her mascara from the night before, it was running onto her cheeks. "Darling" she cooed "this is left over from Saturday night - I simply couldn't bear to remove it, because I liked my glam look so much!" The LE was reminded of a quote about Barbara Cartland - Clive James spoke of her use of boot polish for eye make up and I checked because we weren't sure of the exact quote, Twitter reliably informs me it was "Twin miracles of mascara, her eyes looked like the corpses of 2 small crows that had crashed into a chalk cliff"