retiredmartin

December 22nd 2025. St Leonards.

I’ll keep you waiting for the “birthday pub“; it’s a doozy.

We managed 18,000 steps on my birthday, (Mrs RM does more than me as her legs are smaller, it’s the patriarchy), including a bracing stroll along the prom between St Leonards and Hastings, which are virtually contiguous (word of the year).

Not our first ever visit here, but you need a dozen trips to get to the heart of any English town (except Maidenhead, where none will suffice).

I throw a stone in the sea, just as Mrs RM spies a seal 200 metres out.

“You’ll hit the likkle seal” she cries. It’s a bottle.

The Prom has a Banksy somewhere, and a restaurant called Half Man Half Burger, and a lot of politics.

St Leonards ought to be better known than Southwold or Whitley Bay, and one day it will be.

But on my birthday, I have it to myself.

Except… the Goat Ledge is filling up,

and folk brave the chill for their Mersey oysters and pints of Floc.

And as we stroll Bottle Alley I’m in a state of contentment despite the lack of newness.

The wall of glass is a real curio, and I’m sure this bit,

is modelled on a 1982 New Order 7″.

But there’s nothing to be had by looking back, as someone once said.