Re-shingling the Beach

It was my first work day at Brough as a committee member. I was relieved that the sun was shining. Some of the sturdier committee members were working on taking the slip out of the slipway. The photo shows it looking as slick as a seal after their good work.

Others were working away with pick and shovel to dig out the floor of the bothy in preparation for repairs and re flooring.

I joined a fellow committee member moving the fist-sized rocks --'ankle-turning size' she described them and I concurred--off the path where the sea had hurled them in a fit of pique like a toddler tossing toys out of a pram. I quickly dubbed our task 're-shingling the beach' and suggested we'd have an opportunity perhaps even with those same rocks to return them to the sea again.


Above the slipway, the rambunctious sea in full storm strength had hurled tons of stone onto what had been a smooth, level parking space. Shovels and wheelbarrows were making a dent in the storm-tossed rocks; I contributed a bucket or two tossed over the sea wall, but a handful of these errant pieces of geography came home with me in my pocket. For some reason they caught my eye. Just another instance of that irony that individuality somehow makes a connection, an affection, that excess overwhelms.