I’m back home for Christmas in Lowestoft, which is the most easterly place in Great Britain. It’s not the most amazing place on Earth – it produced The Darkness, for goodness’ sake – and was described in unflattering terms by Gene Simmons during the second series of Rock School. It is, however, by the seaside, and that’s always good, right?

The worst thing about being home this Christmas is that my mother decided to downsize while I was at uni, which means I am left sleeping on a sofa for a week. (I’m not complaining. Too much.) This means I can’t really sleep, and when she’s up for work early, I wake up too.

All of this adds up, basically, to an early morning walk to the beach – the new BBC Weather site helpfully told me that sunrise would be as late as 8.02am, which meant I could laze in bed (on the sofa) until 7am.

It’s not the prettiest coastline, but there is some interesting stuff around that made for some interesting shots (I hope). Of course, jumping down from the seawall onto a narrow stretch of pebbles and sand while the tide was coming in to shoot it wasn’t my brightest idea, but I blame the early start and lack of tea. Anyway, you can see the rest of the set on flickr.

The thing that interests me most about this one, though, is just how far away from due East the sun is rising – it’s 22nd December, the morning after winter solstice, and this photo was taken facing due east (that line in the middle, that points east) at 18mm on my 450D, so fairly wide. I moved around a bit to take a few shots that I’ll stitch into a panorama at some point of this.

It’s mind-blowing, really, standing there on the edge of the land, the sea all around. That’s enough by itself to make you feel small, but then you start to realise how much the tiny little wobble of this little planet of ours affects where the sun rises – quite a few degrees south of due east at this time of year. That tiny difference over all those millions of miles…

…and then you turn 180º and see a Bird’s Eye factory. That’s called perspective.