Before moving away from the small coastal village where I spent my childhood and former years I knew a mysterious girl named Dover Anthem<\/p>\n
She was considered odd by many as she could often be found combing the beach for the lost treasure of pirates or swimming alone in the sea<\/p>\n
For some reason she and I grew close and we spent a great of time together exploring the white cliffs and searching for spent ordnance at the abandoned rifle range<\/p>\n
When the months were hot we would spent hours swimming in the sea<\/p>\n
Our close friendship (we were never lovers<\/i>) ended when I moved to London to seek my fortune<\/p>\n
I asked her to come with me but she could not be persuaded to leave the village<\/p>\n
When I visited my parents I always found time to swim with Dover Anthem but our relationship had changed<\/p>\n
It was more distant<\/p>\n
As I became more successful my visits became less frequent and soon our sparse correspondence faded altogether<\/p>\n
My parents aged and became frail so they moved inland and I did not visit my village for over twenty years and when I did so it was to purchase a grand house with extensive views of the sea<\/p>\n
But things had changed<\/p>\n
The village had grown bigger and was busier<\/p>\n
I tried to capture my former years<\/p>\n
But Dover Anthem was nowhere to be found<\/p>\n
I made extensive enquiries but each answer was vacant<\/p>\n
Nobody had any memories of my dear friend<\/p>\n
Only a fisherman out of Deal vaguely remembered her swimming in the sea and collecting stones from the beach<\/p>\n
But his memory was fading<\/p>\n
He supposed that she might have drowned (for she swam each day<\/i>) or had fallen from the white cliffs<\/p>\n
But I found no trace of any tragic events in the parish records<\/p>\n
There was an entry about a channel swimmer fair of complexion who was found on the beach one morning greased up and preparing to swim to France<\/p>\n
But the church papers did not record whether she reached her destination or not<\/p>\n
On even if she ever returned<\/p>\n
As the years passed I could be quite often be found fishing from the crumbling sea wall<\/p>\n
I would search the waves for my former friend and would occasionally see her swimming near the great white cliffs<\/p>\n
But she would not come close to my station<\/p>\n
We would wave but never speak<\/p>\n
For our friendship was by now quite silent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Before moving away from the small coastal village where I spent my childhood and former years I knew a mysterious girl named Dover Anthem She was considered odd by many as she could often be found combing the beach for the lost treasure of pirates or swimming alone in the sea For some reason she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}