Like Finding Something Valuable On A Beach

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

If we're talking about a normal sized book, then as a rule it takes me much longer than a day to finish it. Normally three factors come into play. I have the time, I have no other distractions and I want to go on.

Well yesterday those factors came to me. Helped along by some pretty miserable weather and in terms of rugby most Welsh people having Georgia on their mind (the team they were playing against).

So the book I read and completed in a day was Strands by Jean Sprackland. A book about the things she discovers on the same stretch of beach during a year(Ainsdale Sands between Blackpool and Liverpool).

And what she discovers could be various, literally from antique porcelain to Prozac, animal (not vegetable) mineral and man-made almost all flotsam of life seem to be washed on the shores.

This book did not inspire me to wander Barry Island grab whatever from the sand, search for details of what I collected through the year and write about it. Regular readers will know that aside from gazing at the views I'm not a beach body....and I don't have one either.

But whilst it didn't give me the enthusiasm to follow her. What Strands did do was to remind me of what a book does at it's best better than any other art forms. It takes a seemingly dull subject and thanks to the voice of the writer transforms it to something really special. For yes dear reader I loved this book. If it wasn't borrowed from the library I would have put it on a bookshelf marked "quiet little gem".

It's worth a read. For then you can savour the taste of what true writing is all about.

Until the next time.