Another Skill I Never Mastered

After the HMS Victory we met up with some friends of Anne's who knew Nicole when she was a mite, and we drank a drink in a pub then ate pizza and pasta in the scorching South Coast sunshine before we sensible Australians, respectors of the Sun, had the Enormous Parasol deployed, and drank some wine while Lyra ran around the outdoor piazza-style dining environment, to the possible annoyance of the other diners.

Afterwards, in an act of post-prandial contrition and atonement, we walked the Millennium Walk into some other areas of Portsmouth before arriving at some immense battlement, punctuated with arches, one of which hid a door which led through the thick fortification wall to a little shingle beach where a few ne'er-do-wells sunbathed in the suntrap reflecting off the brickwork.

I took a walk along the top of the battlement and saw a guy cleaning the windows on the house and reflected that, whether it was the exact composition of the soapy sudsy water, the precise action of the squeegee or the ineffective application of the Two-Cloth Method, here was a skill being very ably demonstrated in front of me, which despite the best efforts I have been able to apply, I have just never been able to master.