On The Beach

April showers bring May flowers, or so they say. This year it seems to have happened the other way around, and we're experiencing the brunt of weather's karma for the beautiful sunshine we had all last month. Put it this way: it's not been a day for lying on the beach, unless you're the type of creature that enjoys that kind of thing in any climate.

Which brings me, via a very circuitous train of thought, to a story Tom and Ivory told me a couple of years back. While walking along a street one day, they passed a middle-aged couple engaged in an animated conversation. As they moved into earshot, the man turned to the woman, and in an immensely exasperated tone, asked "What are you? A starfish?"

Moments later they were out of earshot again, and any hope of establishing a context to the conversation was gone. In the years since this happened, we've pondered long and hard about what circumstances could possibly drive a man to ask his wife whether she is, in actual fact, a starfish. There really aren't many plausible explanations. The best we've ever come up with is that seconds prior to his fateful question, she'd turned to him and said: "You know what I really like? Lying on beaches in the rain, breathing through microscopic tubes and preying on molluscs."

If that is indeed the case, then today must have been like all of her dreams come true. Though thankfully I didn't encounter her out on the sands. As memorable a blip as that would have made, I do try and place limits on the amount of weirdness that inhabits my journal.