White Surf at Machrihanish The way the sea boiled that morning should have been warning enough – my palette so laden with Titanium White it tilted towards my thumb. Just as, hours later, the whole sea tipped from West to East. Roller raced over roller until the ocean built itself into a wall blotting sky darker than Payne’s Grey. Then, with its racehorse tongue, it gulped down the shoreline, seawalls, promenades, amusement arcades, ice cream parlours and, behind them, offices and houses, even the church (where someone said the last they saw of the priest was this tiny black figure clinging to one of the bells in the tower). The skyline gone. They found me later in the week under thousands of others washed up miles down the coast - a human raft among splintered homes, fishing boats moored inland riding a tide of rooftops and trees. They said my wrist and sleeve were smothered in white as though I’d become half angel. Pat Borthwick
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