Of Rocks and Writing

I remember one Christmas holiday, more years ago that I care to say. I came home after my first term away at university studying geology and climbed up the old iron age hill fort behind our house to stare out across the landscape.

It was a view I had looked at many times before. But this time it was different. This time I saw it through the eyes of a geologist. I saw the structures that underlay the hills, the dip and strike of the strata, the folds, the fault lines. I saw where the limestone ended and the clay began.

I've seen the world differently ever since. To me the landscape tells a story.

Writers see the world in a different way to other people as well. As the geologist in me sees the story behind the rocks in these cliffs - a tale of an ancient ocean and the mighty creatures that swam its depths - so the writer in me sees the stories behind the smallest things.

What have those people found on the beach - washed up by the tide?