Dreams of a Gunman Coming along the Path

Em had an unexpected day off yesterday, and we all had some unexpected sun, the latter particularly welcome after the white sky apocalypse of the day before (walking down George Street with Andy, his comment on the gloom above us 'this is Hell'). Ambling from here to Em's house I actually found I was too hot. Em didn't believe me that it was warm at all outside, and for our walk to the Marina dressed as though it was the depths of winter.
We walked along the seafront, thronged with summer people, queues for the big wheel and the coffee stalls. On the other side of the pier two drunk men stood on the stone steps shouting obscenities, their heads all hot and red as if they had somehow got sunburnt already (It wasn't thathot).
The Marina was its usual soulless fascinating place. Em says she finds it claustrophobic and unattractive. It certainly is unattractive, everything all new and plastic-y and designed without thought to aesthetic. Well, probably designed for the aesthetics of the rich, who don't tend to have much in the way of taste. It was good to see the line of fishing boats on the quay though, far more interesting than the yachts, the smell of fish and seas far outside the sight of land. I saw the ship with the street lamp on it's deck. How I would love to see that lit...
Eventually we wormed our way through the labyrinth of the Marina, passing by the paint-smelling workshops, where invisible men hammered at unseen pieces of boat to the strains of classical music someone was playing on a tinny stereo. We slipped through the small exit onto the Undercliff Walk.
The Undercliff Walk, as the name rather cunningly implies, runs under the cliffs from Brighton all the way to Saltdean. Set into the cliffs at regular points are mysterious steel or metal doors. I have no idea what they open onto or where they lead to. The wide and zig-zagging concrete path is protected from the sea by a low wall. When the tide is out a strange landscape is revealed that resembles a moonscape, all chalk furrows and jagged rock. Occasionally man-made (or man-crafted) planks of woods are revealed. The whole landscape looks like it could have come out of a 1970s Doctor Who story.
We ate our lunch, bought from Asda at the MArina, on one of the wide concrete groins leading down into the sea. No clouds in the deep blue sky, and the sun hanging there, an example of incomprehensible physics. Flurries of sand flies, like little punctuation marks kept drifting up from the small strip of sand before the moonscape started. After lunch, I lay down on the concrete groin, used my rucksack as a pillow and fell asleep.
Falling asleep outside is one of those great luxuries of life. It is never quite the deepest sleep ever, but is languorous in a way that an interior sleep never quite seems to be. Yesterday, concrete had never felt so comfortable in my life, and my rucksack put my pillows to shame. I fell into light and troubled dreams, of a gunman coming along the Undercliff Path. It felt like I had slept for hours, but Em said it was only for twenty minutes. We resumed our journey onto Saltdean where we caught the bus back to Brighton.