Saturday March 24th was a busy day, and also #PhotoAnHour.

My day started at 6am, I got up to feed the cats, and was just in time to see Andy off to work.

By 7am I was showered and dressed, feeling excited about the day ahead.


At 8am I was in the car ready to drive to Southwold, an hour away. Today was the Beach Clean organised by local brewery Adnams. This is the third time I've been, each time more people have volunteered. The first time we were a group of about 35, this time our numbers had increased to 100.


Just after 9am I arrived in Southwold, found a prime (free!) parking spot by the pier, and headed to the beach for my pre-clean wander. I park near the pier, wander up to the meeting point, and from there we continue to the sea wall. Then I make my way back again meaning I walk the length of the beach twice.


At 10am I was still enjoying the solitude of the beach, it was a nice day, a coat and gloves were needed but walking kept me warm. I paddled in the sea - in welly boots, I'm not brave enough to go in barefoot at this time of year! How do people go swimming in the sea on Boxing Day?


By 11am the Beach Clean was underway. We'd signed in, been briefed, had a group photo and were recording everything we picked up within the first 100m of beach. It'll come as no surprise that plastic made up the bulk of the rubbish. We always find few odd socks, quite a lot of wet wipes, and bits of rope and string too.


At noon we'd reached the sea wall and our bags were collected together, this photo shows only a fraction of the collection - the van is already full. In total we gathered 108 bags of rubbish. The beach always looks clean, but so much of what we picked up was small, half buried, or entangled with seaweed.


By 1pm I'd had a cheese and ham toasty and a mug of earl grey at a beach side cafe, and made my way to Harris & James for a salted caramel ice cream. If you're ever in Southwold you much seek out this shop, the staff are wonderful, the ice cream divine!


At 2pm it was time for me to make my way home, and to take one last photo of the pretty beach huts, this one being the prettiest of the pretties.


3pm. As I was passing B&Q on my way home I stopped to pick up some paint for our downstairs loo, and to pick up yet more green swatches for the bedroom. I've narrowed it down to two now, and there's hardly a shade between them so I think eeny meeny miny mo is the order of the day! It's between R260D and X128.

By 4pm I was at my desk. After 5 hours at the beach all I really wanted to do was lay on the sofa but a client had other ideas. Her website needed to launch on Monday (and it did), but she'd changed her mind about some of the design elements and I needed to get them changed and approved so that they could be implemented in time. Tea helped me through.

At 5pm I was waiting for client feedback and Tinker decided that she was due some attention. I can't tell you how much time I spend working around a cat. Sometimes she falls asleep on my arm so I have to work one handed.


6pm came all too soon, the day seemed to go by in a flash. But at least I was done, the design was signed off, the client happy, and I could make another cuppa and get my ass on the sofa at last. Tinker took this as her key to make sure I stayed where I was for the foreseeable and fell asleep on my chest.


And here is where I stopped taking photos. Andy came home at about 7pm, he made supper, and we watched The West Wing. Tinker didn't move far all evening, and Socks turned up at about 9pm, demanding his night time Dreamies.

It was my wish at the beginning of the year to avoid that Sunday night feeling of a weekend wasted. My goal was to have a plan in place for the coming weekend by each Friday evening, and this weekend was a busy one.

Thanks to Jane and Louisa for hosting, I really like looking back over these posts to see what my days consisted of.

How was your weekend?

I'll leave you with a few bonus pics from my day.







A happy by-product of the day was the opportunity to expand my seaglass collection. This is what I picked up, adding to my meagre collection of four tiny pieces.