This is Fred, he’s a monument to the time when all of Dungeness was an ancient and powerful Fishdom. The locals leave him here as a reminder of their fishcesters, and so that the youngers may never doubt their elders. It is said that if you place your finger in Fred’s mouth, jiggle it about a bit like a key in an old lock, then turn your finger 45 degrees clockwise, you will be transported back to the time of the Fishdom. I didn’t do that because as much as I like taking photos of dead things, I don’t like touching them, at least not without gloves on. Anyway, luckily for me, fisherwives still talk, especially to nature reporters with credentials as good as mine. So I sat down with Ruby and Maeve one sunny Sunday to learn about the true history of Dungeness. Once upon a time, Dungeness was home
In the beginning, the earth had teeth. It was much harder for the people then, as getting from A to B at a pace quicker than a slow amble was a complicated feat, and involved razor sharp attention to avoid damage to shins or toes or knees. The seers said that people stood around a lot at first, occasionally picking fruit from the trees which happened to be growing nearby. There was hardly any shelter in those days, and a lot of people died from exposure or nutrient deficiencies. The seers also spoke of a time when the earth had a mouth to match all those teeth. They reminded the people of how much harder things had been then, when a person had not much more to do than to hold onto their allotted tooth in order to avoid falling into the mouth. All they had for sustenance was the plaque
[I wrote this earlier this year for a writing competition which I got nowhere in. I still like it, so I am posting it as my final story of the year.] You are standing on a cliff overlooking the sea. It can be any cliff, any sea, but for me it’s a Scottish cliff and a North Sea. The wind is whipping around your head, but it is not so cold that it hurts: it is a rejuvenating kind of wind. You have been here before. It is a place you come when you need to think, when you are burdened with a melancholy that you need to set free. You stand for a long time like a sentinel—seeing but not seeing, watching but not watching, hearing but not hearing—allowing the wind to move through you, carrying away the heaviness until the thought beneath is revealed. Here, there is so much
Last week, I wrote about re-establishing a practice of morning pages. Another essential practice from that period of my life which I have now resurrected is that of ‘artist dates‘. I always thought of artist dates as simply being nice to myself and eventually they morphed into the concept of ‘small joys’, partly because I have pretty much always had a low income, but also because small joys are something nice you do for yourself every day. For me that means always wearing a cool pair of socks and eating nice food. That said, I have decided to do slightly grander gestures for myself on a monthly basis. I suspect this will mainly involve either going to the seaside or going into the woods, both of which I have done recently, hence the pretty pictures in this post. I suppose the point of this post is simply: why do we not