My name is not Ishmael, but like the narrator of Moby-Dick, sometimes I have the urge – with little or no money in my purse – to see the watery part of the world. November is a damp and drizzly month in the soul for Ishmael, and I too have grown a bit grim about the mouth, so I head south-west to the sea, and along Chesil Beach to the Isle of Portland.
The sun shrugs off what has been weeks of cloud and damp, and the air is sharp, promising frost later. It feels like a quickening. Just the sort of tonic that Herman Melville would prescribe to drive off the spleen and regulate the circulation.
