MARCH 2020
Wherever I’ve been in life, I’ve always found my way to the shoreline.
As children my best friend Soz and I would scour the tide mark looking for tiny Cowri shells or ‘Dream Shells’ as her mum would call them. They were pink and speckled and smooth. We’d collect them all up and they’d end in a jar on the fireplace at Rosemary Cottage.
A couple of holidays to the island of Bryher just off the Cornish coast, where we snorkelled through the kelp forests and scared ourselves witless about sea monsters. The island is so small it’s pretty much all shoreline. One of my lifetime favourite painters Kurt Jackson captured the essence of it so beautifully.
Cooking up fresh, line caught mackerel on the stoney beach at Gyllyngvase in Falmouth for late night sunset bbq’s with everyone as many nights a week as we could manage. We studied at Art School during the day and rode horses in the lanes. The luck of it overcomes me.
Long, heat exhausted walks along the sandy shores of rural West Java in Indonesia while Mat took his chances with the reef breaks.
Runs along the Western Australian cliffs near Margaret river, listening to Mumford and Sons before they got really crap. Where the bushes were olive green and greyish blue and the water looked like dark blue saphires twinkling in the harsh Australian sun.
Peering past the ripple from your toes at the fish beneath the harbour pier in Barcelona.
Cobble Stone beaches crucifying the soles of bare feet in East Sussex. Rainy day strolls at Sennen in the midwinter, wrapped in so many coats it was ridiculous. Consuming a lifetime’s worth of lobster and tequila in less than 12 hours in Mexico. That didn’t end well.
Watching the surf and the surfers. Always watching the surfers ha 😏
And the sandy beaches of Ballina and Lennox. Stormy seas throwing up debris from the deep. Puffer fish - you don’t get those funny looking things in England.
What’s my point? I don’t have one really. It’s just nostalgia talking. But for now I just feel like writing and make pictures and talking about the good bits.
