Uncoated steroid tablets taste exactly as you would imagine poison to taste. I know this because I have to take eight pills a day for the last three days with two more to go. The reason is not clear and the doctor and I disagree to the cause of my face turning glowing crimson, followed by an itchy rash that makes me want to scratch my face off, and swelling in places giving me an unrecognisable appearance. This has happened twice over a three week period resulting in me wanting to keep a low profile.

It was to this end that when Dillon requested to go to the beach we decided to go to the most secluded one we know. I am not going to tell where it is but we do have a paint colour named after it. We travel down narrow country lanes, the sort that are only wide enough for one car and you need to keep an eye out for where two could pass so that you know how far you would need to reverse should you meet a car coming the other way. Living in Cornwall has made me rethink what constitutes a narrow road. Maybe I have just never travelled along these roads at this time of year before but my delight in the unexpected wonderment at the road sides made me momentarily forget my glowing fat face. More often than not Cornish lanes have steep banks on either side; this is either where stone walls have become so overgrown with plant material as to look like a earth bank, or the road so old and well trodden as to have worn a deep furrow into the ground making it lower than the ground on both sides. Either way the edges of the roads were thick with snowdrops, I have never seen them in such profusion layered in drifts up the banks turn after turn along the road. I had expected to see the early primroses but this was made lovelier by the unexpected nature of it.

Dillon took some persuading to do the walk that leads to this beach, he kept asking where the beach was until he could look down onto it, and even then it looks a long way away. It starts with fifty steps then a zigzag path with a rapid decent ending with a scramble over roughly hewn steps in the rock. The day was unseasonably warm with a beautiful deep blue sky, someone had left a fire smouldering but that was the only evidence of humanity. We collected some more drift wood and built up the fire but it was just for fun because we were able to take off our coats and dig with Dillon in the sand. We collected odd bits of broken plastic flotsam that Tom and Dillon called treasure and ate our pasties that were still warm from the oven and a bear’s foot, a pastry stuffed with rich dried fruit and citrus peel covered in icing and flaked almonds, from the bakers that are big enough to share. We persuaded Dillon to make the climb back up to the car park by wondering aloud if he was big enough to climb the steep mountain back to the car, and he did, all the way even finding the energy to climb the wooden gate at the top. It was just a day out but it felt like a holiday.

And my face?; the water blister type swelling is subsiding for the second time leaving my completion with the texture of a deflated old balloon, you know the sort you find behind the sofa six months after the party where it retains the surface area of the inflated balloon while being shrunk to the size it was before being blown up. Trust me when I tell you on eyelids and the soft area under the eye, this is not a good look. Am I going to look like I am 80 years old for the next twenty odd years until I in truth reach that age? Oh please no.