Friday, With Salt

The heat snuck in overnight—quiet, heavy, and oddly intimate. It wrapped around the rooftops, pressed itself against the windows, and now it’s sitting on your chest like a sunburnt cat. You wake up already slightly annoyed, not at anything in particular, just... atmospherically.

It’s Friday. The air tastes like old salt and hot pavement. Seagulls are circling with malicious intent. The bin wagons sound like they’re falling apart in slow motion. Somewhere nearby, someone’s having a very loud phone call about absolutely nothing.

But still—there’s something about it.

Somewhere between the salt, the heat, and the hush, I remember who I used to be—before emails, deadlines, or town hall notices. The seaside doesn’t just remind me of childhood. It reboots it.

The air feels like it’s holding its breath. A heatwave’s coming. You can feel it in your teeth. And not just any heatwave—a British one. The kind that makes you optimistic and irritable in the same breath. The kind that turns every patch of grass into a pub garden and every man over 40 into a weather app prophet.

And here we are, in our little peninsula of paradox. New Brighton. Where you can get a tray of curry and chips for under a fiver, or a chia smoothie for six quid if you turn left instead of right. Where the sunsets are astonishing and the budgets are invisible. Where every mural is a promise and every pothole a punchline.

It’s Friday, and we made it through another week of announcements that feel like déjà vu. Public meetings that ask for your views but forget to bring a pen. Reports with titles so hopeful you'd think we lived in Bilbao. Or Brighton. The otherone. The richer cousin with the beachfront yoga and working infrastructure.

But I wouldn’t trade it. Not really.

Because here, the water still smells like salt and petrol. The railings are hot to the touch by noon. The sand feels like childhood. And even when you’re furious—especially when you’re furious—there’s a weird, grounding love that seeps in through your socks when you walk too close to the tide.

We live in a town that’s always on the cusp. The cusp of regeneration. The cusp of decay. The cusp of something better, if only someone could work out how to get the funding forms filled in properly. And while the adults argue over who forgot to bring the bucket and spade, the tide just keeps coming in.

It’s good to remember that. That the tide doesn’t care.

It’ll wash away footprints, fag ends, and policy errors with the same indifference. And then it’ll glitter like diamonds under a low sun, reminding us that sometimes the best parts of life are the bits no one planned.

So here's to the weekend. To burnt shoulders and too many ice creams. To sand in your shoes and cold cans at dusk. To overhearing a local councillor arguing in the Morrisons queue and pretending not to listen. To sunburned dogs and kids with fishing nets. To the slight chance it all turns out okay.

And to New Brighton—the slightly wonky front porch of the Wirral. Still standing. Still dreaming. Still the best worst-kept secret in the North. Take your shoes off. The sand’s warm.

And so the sun begins its slow rise and descent, the tide rolls in like breath returning, and we—salted, sun-kissed, slightly frayed—make space for stillness.

Shalom Shabbat. שלום שבת

May your evening arrive soft as the sea, and your rest be deep.

RW