I went on holiday and all I bought you ....

Utterly shamed by the holiday photographs currently appearing from abroad during Rachel's Grand Tour over at http://crowd-pleasers.blogspot.com/

I went on holiday and this is the quality of shot I took:

because I went with nine children. Whose ages ranged from 7 years down to 2 years.

And we only had one case of chicken pox and two cases of 24 hour vomiting.

However, we also had a six bedroom stone farmhouse, two miles of glorious beach to ourselves and horses next door. Plus sunshine, an unholy amount of laughter and a sophisticated methodology for telling our gin and tonics apart once the children were in bed (which utilized the lemon/lime system).

So I wrote a poem about a little bit of it.

The Beach at Aldingham

Sand stone symmetry:
the boys’ trenches
echo the girls’ serpentine trails
of placed pebbles, size-graded for beauty.
The boys just dug
their series of tunnels
to surround our castles
and lead to the sea,
which is far, but comes quick here.
This timeless day we have found
the decaying carcass of an ichthyosaur dolphin,
and fossils in the shale
of creatures we think we recognise,
and everlasting soles
of shoes we do not.
The tide comes in with a rush
and the baby Canutes
plug and dam and block
to stop the ruination
of castles built on sand,
but once the race is lost
they too become sea;
dance on the bones
of what they have built.
We shall wash them, and feed them
and they will shut sandman’s eyes
and sleep before the sun sets
their day endless.
Later, in the dark
I will clutch a man’s hand:
he and I both
know days end.