There’s something I’ve always found relaxing about a stroll
on a beach and the sound of the sea. Most of the places I visit are coastal or
within reasonable striking distance. It
is a strange thing that I live on the Fylde Coast with our wonderful expanse of
beaches yet never set foot on them. I can’t remember last time I was on the
sands at Blackpool but probably not since my children, now adults, were small.
The beach was my playground when I was a girl. We lived on
the front, just the promenade and the tram tracks to cross and I was there,
usually with others. After I’d grown out of making sand-pies and digging for
water, my interests turned to marine life and I would go looking for creatures.
A good place to search was in the rock pools around the outside of the old
open-air swimming baths. My mother was not impressed with a collection of
starfish I took home in a bucket to our pub and my father was tasked with taking them back
‘before any more climb out on to the stairs’. Starfish getting stuck on the
stairs isn’t what you expect to see when you call in the vault for a pint, not
even in Blackpool. I was given a lecture on sea-life needing a proper, natural
habitat and those poor starfish would have been suffering. I’d done a similar
thing with tadpoles in a jam jar a couple of years earlier, before we moved to
Blackpool, and I clearly hadn’t learnt, but that’s another story.
These days I look for interesting shells and I’m not harming
anything by keeping them. A few times a year my travels take me to the South
and South West coasts of Scotland, where I will search for shells and watch our
dog having the time of his life in the sea. Storage jars are great for keeping
my shells safe and for display purposes. The large mussel shells are a
beautiful dark blue in the sunlight and the mother-of-pearl shines on the
inside. A couple of trips to the Outer Hebrides gave me the opportunity to find
some whiter than white cockle shells. I keep them separate, with a couple of
scoops of silver sand I brought home from the Hebridean Atlantic coast.
I’d like to visit the Orkney Islands and bring shells home
from there, but maybe I should pay more attention to the coastline right here
on my own doorstep, at least for the time being.
My own poem,
Seashell Keepsake
In the corner of a mem’ry box
I found the tiny shell.
It must have meant something to me once,
But now, I cannot tell.
Who wrapped it in some silver paper
Torn from a serviette?
It might be from one of the children
So why would I forget?
I can still recall all thirty names,
That class from ’99.
Those lively, summer-born four year olds
Learning to stand in line.
Just a small, pretty, pale pink spiral
Someone once gave to me,
Now back in the box where I found it
And wrapped up carefully.
PMW 2018
Thanks for reading, Pam x
0 comments:
Post a Comment