31st March

The tide was out this afternoon, further than we had ever seen it. Inch thick, smooth water spread over newborn ripples of sand, which could only have been walked on once a year since people came here. M jogged round and round and up and down, seeming aimless and free as the seagulls whose prints we crossed sometimes. Soft dark red petally mouths on the end of thick stalklike tubes vanished if you put your foot next to them. I remembered they must be razor shells. Newly oozed lugworm casts like miniature Henry Moore figurines. The sun was soft in the cooling air, but as this was the first time I'd been out since going to work there was no sadness to its going - I felt blessed to have been given this time at all. The ferry veered round to come into harbour, colossal in closeness, and we called M to see. Feyee he said. People coming back or just coming. It made waves suddenly, straight as rulers on the flat sand, but they soon blended back into the calm, as everything does, here. He went back to his jogging, back straight, body light bathed, size 9 (a bit too big but soon grown into) blue wellies with the red soles, in and out of the sea's edge, over beds of dark blue mussels clenched against the air, crunchy as dragon skin. We walked that way. A chair, incongrously straight thin rusty legs made pristine reflections in the water. A few winkles perched on its back, precarious property prospectors. We'd never seen it before, wondered if it had fallen from a boat, or some tourist, seduced by a mermaid had left it there. It reminded me of those at school. Maybe someone in assembly one day had discovered the secret of teleportation. I hoped the tide had been out for them too. Or maybe a mermaid perched on it and, hidden, listened to the conversations of people walking their dogs on the beach. Further along two large slabs of metal poked like vertebrae from a few metres into the sea. Telling M not to follow him, R made his way delicately in his big black boots, along a ridge of musssels beside them ti investigate, but soon crouched over to peer into the water beside him intead. "There's a starfish" he shouted, excitedly, and drew his hands a foot apart "This big!" Picking up a squirming M I teetered over the barnacle crusty bumps. The starfish really was that big, and ORANGE