Magic Things At The Beach

Yesterday it was. We were sitting on a low stone wall the three of us, looking towards the sea, the sea was far away. A man walked close to the edge in a northerly direction, he wore dark shorts and no top covering his portly belly, a full white beard bobbed up and down under his chin. We knew at once it must be father christmas.

At the star of greece we saw that an item on the menu came served with sea foam.

The sea at port willunga was the colour of something that one of us remembered eating. It was a boiled sweet. I asked if it was crystomint, he said it wasn't then he thought again and said that probably it was.

There was a place where part of the rocky reef looked like a giant hand. It had four fingers and a thumb that was why. It didn't point towards the sea no it didn't but it was oriented towards the sea the tips of the fingers were to seaward.

I found a treasure it was a fossilised clam. Not embedded in a rock this clam it was an entity a rock that used to be a clam. I picked it up my daughter said it must have looked into the face of the medusa. She thought there must still be a little clam inside she rattled it next to her ear she said she could hear something, but when I tried I couldn't.

I found another rock it was small and white. I carried it for fifty metres then I tossed it in the air. A man and a dog were looking I didn't know they were looking I wouldn't have done it if I knew. I would have done it later.

In the seaweed there was something small and red it was a rubber bung.

Also in the seaweed was a tiny orange crab it was dead I picked it up. It had not lived forever like they say the lobster does although that is not quite fair even a lobster can have an accident.

Preposterous

I was playing with my stones, trying to build a stone man that kept falling down. This was a pity because I had the ideal head. A triangular shaped stone with three holes in it, two eyes and a mouth. It looked like the head in Munch's painting The Scream, except Munch's head was more like an upside-down pear. When I say ideal, it wasn't really because the point of the triangle was where the chin would be, so the head wouldn't balance on any other stone no matter how flat. Nor would Munch's have though.

Pliny the Elder appeared. You have a collection of stones! he exclaimed. May I see them?

Alright, I said, giving up on my man. See. These are my 2 favourites, a fossil, and an opposite-of-fossil.

There is no such thing as an opposite-of-fossil, said Pliny.

Yes there is, I said. Have a look.

Hmm, said Pliny, very amusing. And what are these?

These are river pebbles from Tasmania. This is a conglomerate. This is a quartz, with dirt on it. These two green ones are malachites I found at Burra. This is Munch's head. This one looks like a gingerbread man, running. This one looks like a toffee. These are two I picked up at Glanum, in Provence. Personally I believe that they are bits of pottery but no one else does. And that's a shell.

You are very fond of stones I see, said Pliny.

I am, I said. I sometimes think I must have been a stone in a former life, I added recklessly.

Preposterous! spluttered Pliny. If that were so you would still be one today!