After I came back from my home turf on the essex coast, I got out a 1980s ordnance survey map and read it like the book of my past, for some time. It was the names of farms that got me, their tracks down to the estuary—Lauriston Farm, Joyce's Farm—which I walked with the certainty of escape when I was fourteen or so; and the names of villages I knew from signposts on foot, on my bike. To revisit a place you knew on foot and on my bike, only, to whizz through in a car and catch a name—Langford Place—Ulting—was to catch my breath on behalf of former selves. The ordnance survey graphic for the sea wall is poignant. I ponder the fact of having grown up behind sea walls, having dreamt of walking them, endlessly. They are now, I learn, relaxing sea walls where they have degraded, letting the flood tides in.
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