Learning how to sneak up on a limpet

A great day yesterday working for World Oceans Week Celebrations as their Beach Poet.  I had to gather my own punters by parading through the marquees with a large badge and a signboard, which was a tad demanding to think about, but actually ok to do.  Of course poets have always had to tout.

I gathered a surprisingly large group of kids aged 10 to 14 or so, lots of whom lived in Port William and knew the beach like the back of their hands.  I asked them where were the best places to find interesting 'treasures', and they took everyone there on one of the most gloriously shiny days the Solway can deliver.  We lifted boulders and caught small green crabs with soft backs, which the kids explained were the pregnant females.  Someone got nipped. 

I stopped to exclaim at a fantastically barnacled limpet, which just for a moment I'd thought I could lift up.  Then it clung tight.  The lads explained how to sneak up on a limpet.  'You only get one chance'.  They demonstrated too, and someone got their finger squeezed fiercely.

We gathered seaweeds, live crabs, dead crabs (one was very, very dead, and even the kids deemed it too smelly to write next to), a heavy metal bolt, very corroded, a seaworn piece of hosepipe that had turned almost into ceramic, driftwood, shells, Oarweed...

Then into the shade of a tent to read some sea poetry by Russell Hoban, Kevin Crossley-Holland and more, then we took up my little created-for-the-purpose Beach Poetry booklets, and got stuck in.

Have a read.