Today I spent some time on the pier watching the sea. We’re in the end of a hurricane and the waves were coming in higher than usual under the weathered boards, sometimes only a few yards away from where the starlings sleep. Occasionally small groups of them took flight towards the marina, perhaps in search of somewhere less perilous to roost, the wind buffeting them as they sped across the grey-green water.

Waves crashed in, some mountainous, some merely huge. I began to notice it was not the tallest ones that made the biggest explosions as they hit Albion Groyne, but those that seemed lower, faster, more angry. Yet despite their speed they never seemed to catch up with the waves in front. It was as if they deliberately distorted time, creating the excuse to race and rage in the hunt for their predecessors; low-hunched wolves with foaming mouths hurling themselves at the shore.