Squiddity

Pliny and Nostradamus went to Semaphore yesterday and walked along the shore towards Largs. The beach was surprisingly empty except for some people. There were seagulls, standing as though placed by a random generator of seagulls, amongst stringballs and tumble weeds, placed by a random generator of beach detritus. There was one large orange starfish spreadeagled on the sand, expiring. Pliny and Nostradamus each unknown to the other counted its seven arms. There were seven.

The sand was rippled in a most uncomfortable and rippley way, it was like walking over corrugated iron. If you took care to place your foot so that the high point of the ripple sat comfortably between the row of your toes and the ball of your foot you could be sure that a second uncomfortable ridge would be just exactly under your heel. This would cause you to hobble in a most unsatisfactory way. Pliny and Nostradamus turned back after a while of this.

And so it was, thought Pliny, that we didn't pass Joe's Kiosk, where Senator Nick Xenophon had recently been photographed wrestling with a squid. Pliny was wrong in this, because they were walking towards Largs, not Henley, or Grange. But Pliny was thinking of squid for a reason.