Football

Occasionally on Thursdays I play football on the bumps, ruts and dandelion stems of Bents Park, just a toe-punt from the sea. It takes just over half an hour to get there on my bike, up the John Reid Road past Temple Park, straight over the roundabout and on past the shops at the Nook and the white horse, painted on a rock behind semi-detached houses. Then, at the roll of the hill in Marsden, the view of the coast I remember from childhood: pub, tree, roof, roundabout, a grey-blue sea half filling the sky.