Only half an hour’s drive away is Katwijk aan Zee, a traditional town with a small fishing port. During the summer vacation, the weekly Tuesday market is extended: crafts people showing and selling their goods, music, or a display of cars.

The council spent money on a large car park hidden below the dunes. Coffee, a walk round the market, lunch on the beach. This year my friend and I chose the Trio of the Sea – smoked salmon, Dutch shrimps and a delicious taco with tuna and wasabi. We favour Het Strand, with glass panels between tables for privacy.

Today, the heat is back. So, I’m posting a cooling prompt from earlier this year. Write on from Everything was frozen…

Everything is frozen

The welcomes clatter to the ground.
Those sandwiches, salmon and cucumber;
the cheese scones; even the tiered metal tray
on the once-wooden table. Mary, the absentee
landlady, gasps. Two small vowels fall on the carpet.
Everything so white, so silvery, so creaking on the change.

Tom strokes his beard, that has been soft as a lamb,
cuts his finger and now the miracle of the red blood
turning to icy droplets. If there had been a cat,
it would have chased them around the room.
This is always a sadness – a poem or story without a cat.