Port Seton Harbour

(Mags)
It's been a hard couple of weeks for Dougie and me, one way or another, but we are lucky, we have solace right on the doorstep.
The sense of connection with my childhood past is strong when I wander here. This once bustling harbour, buzzed with fishermen's broad brogue as they unloaded their catch and hauled in nets, the atmosphere was redolent with the burring of boats' engines spilling out acrid smoke and a skim of oil that marbles the dark waters with swirling, iridescent rainbows. There's still the echoing skreek and mewing of gulls, the percussive slap of waves against the clinker-built hulls, the tarry smell of salt-wet ropes, the iron-rust clank of anchor chains, all of which also stirred the senses and coloured the brushes of John Bellany's imagination, filling his canvases with myths of sailors and fishwives.
And there, on the horizon, the sleeping lion of Edinburgh's Arthur's Seat, the Lomonds of Fife across the Forth, on to North Berwick Law and Garleton Hill in the east, and back to Cockenzie and Port Seton. Home.