Nell Penrose

Grey seal followed me the whole length of the cove this morning, ten yards out, never once looking away. Didn't feel like being watched. Felt like being walked home.

Hunter's Moon on Monday, so the spring tides are building. Water came right over the bottom of the slipway this morning and the gulls looked personally offended. Moon's in charge, as ever.

For the boats still out

Gale warning for sea area Plymouth tonight, and three of the harbour boats still out past the Lizard. The whole village does the same thing on nights like this: checks the forecast forty times and pretends not to. I put Gran's old storm lantern in the window (battery-powered now, I'm not daft), set a dish of salt on the sill, and said what she always said: Mother of the deep water, hold them light as gulls, put the wind at their backs and the harbour lights before them, and bring them home before the tide turns twice. Two came in by ten. The third rang in from Newlyn at midnight, safe and sheltering. I slept like a stone.

Three knots for the wind

There's an old story along this coast that sea witches used to sell sailors a cord with three knots in it. Untie the first for a gentle breeze, the second for a stiff wind, and the third... well. You never untie the third. That one's a gale. My nephew Kit has been learning to sail all summer at the club in Penzance, and on Saturday he's doing his first proper trip across the bay. So I made him a cord. Three strands of natural hemp, plaited on the harbour wall at low tide with the gulls supervising. I tied a knot at each of three breaths of the wind: one when it was barely lifting the flags, one when it gusted, and the last when a squall came through and soaked me right to the bone. Into each knot I spoke what I wanted for him: patience, good judgement, and the sense to turn back. He's sixteen. He rolled his eyes. He also asked if he was allowed to keep it on the boat, which in my experience is how teenagers say thank you. The part I didn't tell him: the third knot isn't really a gale. It's the one you leave tied so you always remember you've more in you than you're using. Mine has hung on the hook by my door for twenty years. Never once undone. Tide's at 3:40 on Saturday. I'll be up on the headland with a flask, watching for a small white sail.

Down on the Lizard there's a green-and-red stone called serpentine, mottled like an adder's back, and you'll hardly find it anywhere else in Britain. When it's wet on the beach at Kynance, it glows. I don't take pebbles off the beaches anymore. They're needed where they are, holding back the sea. Instead I bought a little offcut from one of the old turners' workshops, polished on his lathe. It sits on the windowsill by the tide table. When a storm's rolling in, I hold it and watch. Something about a stone that was once the floor of an ancient ocean makes the waves feel less personal.