29 FEBRUARY 1992, Page 34

Departure

Strange to imagine as frantically here I wave how this long wet sea-front must seem to float away now behind you, as, in your thick overcoat, you stand surveying it, this whole grey horizon, its warehouses and gantries, slowly rising out of the sea behind you. But I concede a fitness in the odd optical fact that all to which you are witness as you recede through all that spiralling lotion should all alike be flung into so manic a motion by your modest course. Why should I find it queer after all, the way you disorientate such mere dead and senseless objects after what you've done to my own old self-certainty and sense of fun?

Eddie Flintoff