The things you see when you're out without your gun

(post title taken from The Untouchables)

What a day I have had! I have thought long and hard about how to represent it to you. I did not have my camera, and I have been to one end of the world and back with nothing to show for it.

Finally I decided to represent it all to you in drawings, done with the Little Lattes' finest pencil crayons. Did I mention what a stunning artist I am?

When I set off this morning for a work day involving lots of driving, the weather was grey. Drizzly. Cold. Wet. My first trip was an hour-long motorway drive through the Cumbrian mountains; a wonderful drive on a clear day.


The Cumbrian mountains are not so hot on a drizzly wet cold day.

I have made this trip many times before, and I know how often it rains there. I also know that these pesky Cumbrian mountains block out any radio reception. So I popped into the library and borrowed an audio book to cheer the journey up a bit.

And off I went, listening to Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the story of a man and his young son trying to stay alive in a post-apocalyptic America, where biting cold and starving hunger are among the very least of their problems.

I would like to present the book - so far - to you in my arresting pictoral style.

Thankfully, the day began to brighten. My next destination was the coast, and by the time I reached it the sun had broken through and the sky was clear. I had two places to visit which were at either end of the seafront, so I parked at one end and walked.

It was beautiful. The sea was blue, the mountains on the other side of the Bay were visible in the distance, and a small child and her mother were on the beach, exploring the edges of the water for probably the first time this year. It seemed possible that Spring was on its way, and trips to the beach were once more becoming an option.


I used to walk this path before the Little Lattes were born, usually on Sunday mornings. The ocean and the Bay were fascinating and ever-changing - but it was best to keep my eye on the far horizon. To look back at the seafront shops was disheartening - boarded up shopfronts, or tacky shops selling all manner of depressing items. But now, with the restoration of the town's finest hotel, some pockets of hope have started to spring up along the seafront - coffee shops you'd want to go in, shops selling attractive items you might want to buy.

To round off this impressive World Tour - from rainy mountains, through a burnt-out future America, to sunny seaside, I went for a blast of complete Englishness with a scone at the Brief Encounter Tearooms - a scone so delicious that it could have been made by a fairy handmaiden to Enid Blyton.

Enough with the drawings.

I was here.