Easter Sunday on the beach and a heat haze, too. The house is quiet without a film crew and now the street is quiet, too, although the beach is packed with weekenders and day trippers.

It's too cold to swim yet, but I feel pleasantly tired from a bike ride and for now, just looking at the sea's enough. Maybe by May, I'll have the courage to go in the water. A bluebottle's flying around my desk, another sure sign of the change in weather, and suddenly I've noticed blossom everywhere.

I've been reading and looking at Richard Long's Mirage, a book of photos and descriptions of walks or lines and circles make in mud, with stones, bark, slate, flint. Many of them made at remote and wild parts of the world. But some of the walks are closer to home. It is amazing what visual artists can do with an idea, how they can allow it to take them over, or maybe it's a question of confidence - taking the risk of being obsessive.

Then I think about how a path is made by goats, or sheep, or people just walking from one place to another over years or decades, even longer. And I wonder if that, too, is art? The chalk paths over downland, rough with flint....or muddy tracks next to a river, leading to an estuary.