Littlestone Days
After the golf, the bridge and the cocktails, after the sets of tennis with Noel Coward and the Maughams looking on from the balcony, Ah, the dear boys!'
after sherry and theatricals, the dinner-dances and the outings, after charades and canasta and evenings with the gramophone, you alone of them would turn your back and cycle into the wind, then stride your giant stride across that sacred name, Dungeness, hiss of a withdrawing sea across the shingle, the bitter waters, exulting, sacred music perpetually on your tongue as you trudged to the Point sobbing your pent-up grief-and-happiness into the wind, for God's abundant mercies, in giving you such friends, and this wilderness to walk alone in.
That is how I would greet you — had I the courage, had I anything like the presence — on your returning from an afternoon, a bird count, having yet again renounced temptation out there on the marshes!
Stephen Romer
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