game bhaji show

 When we are in Sitges there is usually someone playing this game.The sound of bat and ball heard from afar creates a pleasing harmony with the breaking waves.

At the Farmers' Market today a stall from which the spicy smells of the sub-continent issue forth,  offers samples of cobnut bhaji. Cobnuts are a variety of hazel nut local to Kent and Sussex. Bhaji is  an Indian street food, a sort of fritter. "Kentish bhajis" says the young man at the stall.

One of the things that drives this daily blog is a strange compulsion on my part, the origin of which I can't entirely explain.  It is  to have something to show of my own creation if not every day, most days. It is not something I am necessarily proud of. Neither do I wish to apologise for it.  It is just an affliction that I have to live with, and others who live with me, have to live with it too. Hence the need to keep a notebook in one pocket and camera in the other.   So I cook, I write,  I snap  and cultivate something or other the whole day through. Though  I am not compelled to do any of these things, I  would feel only half alive if I didn't do them.   Perhaps I am not alone in this. Perhaps there is a medical name for it. It is not something that concerns me greatly, but sometimes as to day when I walk though The Grove on my way to the Farmers' Marker, it is topic I like to meditate upon.  For some reason, I think of animals who do not suffer from such urges. Then I think of Walt Whitman who thought:
... he could turn and live with animals, they're so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long."
Could a cure lie there - looking at animals - a pastime, which like Whitman, I find infinitely calming.