INNOCENT BEACH

We decide to spend a sunny day at St.Ives. We lunch at the Porthminster Beach Cafe. Don't laugh - this is no Walls ice-cream candy-floss caff, but an excellent French-style bistro with real seaside atmosphere; outside eating under the awnings if you like, excellent food, and delightful waitresses. Replete with crab linguine and white wine, we stroll along overlooking the beach, and settle on a comfortable seat.

The sand is platinum dust, the sea a sheet of lapis lazuli. In the distance we can see To The Lighthouse; round the corner, a real hurdygurdy softly plays pompitty seaside music. On the beach young fathers encourage their sons to paddle in the slurping waves, or to build impregnable sand-castles, and young wives recline and chat happily in their absence. It all has a wonderful sense of primal innocence, as in that never-never land of M. Hulot's holiday. Why do we feel that it is an epiphany from another world?

And then we realise. It is term-time; all the adolescents - well, nearly all - are safely in their cages. This is a world without (hateful phrase!) teenagers. What a sad thing it is that we should feel this. We have over the years known many youngsters at this time in their lives, and very enjoyable these encounters have been. But herd them into large groups, stuff their minds with yoof magazines and pop, encourage them to drink with no education in how to do it, lead them to think of drugs as a giggle, and they are capable of noisily destroying some of life's most precious experiences.

I ask myself whether I do not exaggerate a minor problem, as old men are inclined to do. Then comes news from the beautiful beaches of Newquay. The life-guards here have been given police powers to act to control drunkenness, drugs, violence, and social disorder among the young. This in some of the most peaceful and satisfying surroundings one could hope to come across in a life's experience. Enough to make you weep.

RAIN, RAIN, RAIN

One knows that there have been periods before when rainfall has been exceptionally high and continuous. So this is no different from any of them, is it?

All I can say is that there are times when it feels like it. The garden furniture lies damply on the patio. Shops are full of 30% reductions in the price of barbecues, chimenea, space heaters, swim-wear, hammocks.... Tell me that our weather has taken a sudden lurch into a wet climate and I will believe you.

Noah, of course, had faith that he would survive, but then he had only forty days of atmospheric depressions to bear. Did he know how long at the outset? And, anyway, how did all those animals survive once they were released from the ark - the ground must have been quite incapable of producing crops to feed them. As much of our farmland now is.

Feeling dismal at the start of another day of assorted rain and high winds is one thing: being told, as many have been, that there is no hope of their flooded homes being habitable for another two years is quite a different prospect. And the price of foods will rocket.

History books will record 2007 as one of the wettest this country has ever known. Who can guess what it will have to say about the aftermath?

The solution? To lose oneself in trivial occupations. Watching television is an alternative too banal to be contemplated - I think I'll try The Tmes crossword puzzle.