Even from the sidelines, watching the vagaries of the car business with its quixotic changes over the last couple of years, has been exhausting. Writing an article about it would be like teaching granny to suck eggs! Everyone can quote their experiences chapter and verse ranging from making super windfall profits to scraping a living together month by month.

So, an opportunity came about through family circumstances to move to a house in Delaware for the summer on the Eastern Shore as part of the Delmarva Peninsula. Locals affectionately refer to it as ‘slower, lower Delaware’ and for most of the time it fits the soubriquet.

Bethany Beach is just north of Ocean City, Maryland with its famous boardwalk and shares frenetic beach activities, especially on the fourth of July – public beaches are a mob scene looking more like a can of sardines and everyone has to turn over in unison to get an even tan! 

Private firework displays compete with those of the coastal cities and indeed some outdo them in hour-long, fabulous and expensive, eye-popping showing off.

I’ve long fostered an attraction for American seaside towns from cheap and cheerful, ritzy-glitzy tee shirt and boogie board shops and restaurants with cheesy names –Krab Kountry or Beach Bites – come to mind. At the other end of the scale Boca Raton is attractive but the people have their noses so far in the air as to counter the attraction.

Ocean View, Delaware is a misnomer; the only way to see the Atlantic would be from a high-rise block of apartments, of which there are none! The house is on a very beautiful golf course (I’ve yet to see an ugly one) and is as quiet as can be except for the early morning mowers and the occasional noisy foursome at the weekend.

Being on a flat coastal plain allows skies that fit from one horizon to the other with both sunrises and sunsets to entertain. The main industry is agriculture – corn (mile upon square mile of it), soybeans, chicken farming and cattle complete the bucolic surroundings. Driving through the countryside is a reward all to itself and is as relaxing as it is pretty.

I recently wrote about Aiden, my eldest grandson, and his newfound love of fishing. Ponds and pools have been his playground all summer so far, so he joined us for a few weeks to fish in the sea, in the bays, in the inlets and on a couple of charters to deeper waters with the attendant benefit of dinner that night. I didn’t know you could eat Triggerfish, let alone how delicious they are. We bought him a casting rod for surf fishing and he mastered that like an old pro.

Talking of old pros, the local fishermen are the kindest folk, sharing tips and tricks and new ways to set up baits and lures for different types of fish. I think I was even more fascinated than Aiden. He took to it like a fish to water!

He’s back at home and getting ready for the start of school (where did the summer go?) and the pace of life is slowing to the beat of the perennial community. We’re looking forward to visiting restaurants and shops around us and if I can find an artists’ community we may well stay as long as we like.