I cycled to Shoreham. It was glorious. On the way, the wind at my back, harder returning, of course.
It was as busy on the seafront as a summer bank holiday, and so many bikes. But I wonder why men in lycra think a seafront cycle lane busy with hire bikes and clapped out old things like mine is for them?
The best bit about cycling to Shoreham is going through the port, over the lock and up into the outskirts with its hidden alleys, recreation grounds and level crossing.
After the crossing behind Dunhelm Mill I came to a queue of cars stretching back to the main road, bad tempers, horns beeping for MacDonalds drive through.
But I was still thinking of the ship of souls I watched pass from the harbour towards the open sea between queues on both sides of the lock, of cyclists, families, small children and dogs. What's in it, a mother asked her son. Wood, he guessed. He might have been right.
Passing the docks at a certain point the smell of timber from Scandinavia is intense.
Overlaid on the smell of timber were domes beyond the beachhuts in Hove, like soul eggs Phantom was carrying away.
They are appearing everywhere.
Monday November 9
My first Zoom poetry reading tonight for Cafe Writers. I walked in the afternoon through Woodvale Cemetery. As soon as I climbed the steps after the coroner's office the smell of damp wood was overwhelming. I used to walk here all the time when the children were little, when we could get through into Woodvale from Downs, the cemetery behind my house. I've barely noticed autumn colours this year but the beech was a joy and a pair of woodpeckers, squirrels, holly berries.
I missed the wilder path because I wanted to do a loop up to the racecourse and home back down the hill. 
Superman's part of a series I've noticed around the city, a lot of them damaged, but he's high up enough to escape. Is he in a relationship with the occupant?
I spent much of the day preparing for my reading, whittling it down to the necessary 15 minutes, deciding on the mood. I kept one poem about a death, but decided I needed to read poems with life in, and some hope.
I ended saying I feel (as a baby boomer) a responsibility to be optimistic. To be able to reassure people in their teens, twenties, thirties, that they will make change happen.
This is not ignoring what's been happening in the world, but acknowledging it's action time. Big time.
I read Watering, Last Smear, The Blue Moon of Mouaz-al-Balkhi, The Ancestors, Love Sonnet, No News - all from A Friable Earth - and three new poems, ending with The New Life, which, I hope, speaks for itself.
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