When I arrived on the Blackpool promenade on the 15th January 2021, the third lockdown in the UK associated with the pandemic. I found an unusually cold morning, without a camera and walking to the coast to breathe in and out some of the stress that had been laying heavily within my heart, perhaps to do with feelings of helplessness for family and loss of the ultimate feeling — that one of freedom?
I walked first of all to the left of North Pier on Blackpool Promenade, an eerie frozen quality had engulfed the promenade, somehow beautiful, somehow sad. January, a month of Mondays in my mind seemed to take on a desperate feeling of what and where next.
A young girl walked past me towards the steps, the tide was in. I listened for a while to the sound of the softly crashing waves. The silence soothed me and then something I had not noticed before, a bell began to chime — it was 11 am.
Written after a home-schooling exercise with my Nephew aged 8. Today Sky News broadcast a special on Mental Health in Blackpool. It is the 19th January 2021 -13.56pm Claire Walmsley Griffiths
