wave, roof, plane

Watching waves break can be soothing, but as Hokusai demonstrates better than this photograph, an image of a wave in the process of breaking and robbed of its denouement, is packed with dramatic potential.

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I catch part of a TV documentary on the inventor of the silicon chip, Robert Boyce. One image in particular stays with me. His sister recalls him as a boy making a small but viable glider. She describes how he got it on to a roof and ran with it. "He came to the edge," she says, "and then kept going. He was the sort of person who got to the end of a roof and kept going".

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In the vegetable garden I look up to see a small, red monoplane banking steeply and circling overhead, a manoeuvre which seems to require extra revs, because its engine makes the enthusiastic noise, which as small boys we tried to imitate in wartime fighter planes joining battle. Above the plane, a pale daytime crescent moon looks on complacently.

There's a reply to Lucy's question Just what are you doing with yourself over on Compasses

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