By this pool at the tide’s edge I’m happy to sit and wait. Just surrounding myself with natural things is enough for today: I am mesmerised with the to and fro of ripples.

Opening the cottage door I can be on the dune in a few steps; then I’m crossing the sand and soon stood standing at the water’s edge. Always returning, hour upon hour, I study the detail of diurnal change, my body’s clock making a difference to what I see, to what I feel. With bare toes in a still-cold sea, I cast off my cares like the sandals I left by the porch step. I have walked barefoot on the springy grass and the still-wet sand. I bring my imagination to bear on what is real.

With intent I watch these ripples. Who knows where they will turn, and when they will fold and flow? At every blink their confluence adjusts. Here is a ripple forming: moving backwards, shimmering forwards it plays with its own reflection. Suddenly, a jagged, infinitely thin line of light flickers out of nothing . . . and is gone.

Once on a different shore I filmed such ripples passing over indentations of sand, across underwater dunescapes washed by water and an ever-present wind. Watching this film, I could hardly believe that what I saw was what I’d seen. It held a continuity I’d craved to record, to fasten down with layerings of print on paper textured by tea and rust. Then with needle and thread, I would stitch a journey over and between these naturally sculptured forms. It would become a gentle vision of wonder - gathered from those shallow pools left by a retreating tide.

But now, let me be returned by the mind’s miracle to my tidal pool, sheltered round by rocky arms, its water rippling constantly from the pull and push of the tide. Sometimes, and beyond all reason, the ripples still themselves; they re-group. It is as if a sudden silence falls on this northern shore, and the tidescape before me holds its breath . . .