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Showing posts with label barbecue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label barbecue. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Beach pimples!






Weather trumped work - at least the academic sort – and we spent the morning on the beach.  The weather varied from scorching sunshine to cloud filtered mugginess.  The other two set off on a long hour duration walk while I slumped in my chair, occasionally braving dead jellyfish to dip myself in the sea.


Resultado de imagen de catalan jellyfish

This year has seen a marked increase in the number of jellyfishes rolling through the surf to die in the shallows.  At least we think they are dead, once they are out of the water and stranded on drying sand they look inoffensively inert.

Legend has it that jellyfish are still poisonous even in death, with the chandelier-like stingers able to inflict wounds on vulnerable flesh even when the malign force driving the living creature is no more.

This morning, there were three glistening ‘pimples’ with easy reach, occasionally washed by more adventurous waves, but anchored on the littoral.  They were viewed with interest by the passing pedestrians promenading along the water line, but it took a couple of young lads to do something about it.


Resultado de imagen de dory and the jellyfish

It is obvious that the younger generation of beach dwellers have been deeply influenced by “Finding Nemo”, especially in the sequence where his dad and the truly wonderful Dory met the jellyfish when the dark (but safe) canyon is rejected in favour of the lighter, higher (but fatal) shallower water.  They know that the dangling stings are painful, but they also know from having seen it in the film that the rounded tops of the jellyfish are harmless.  So, the lads made their hands into crane-like grabs and lifted the blobs from their occasional sea-washed dampness to the fatal embrace of the perennially dry soft sand.


I have to say that the visible reminders of possible pain did not deter swimmers, including myself, from going into the briny.  I did “look about me” to check if there were any obvious transparent dangers, but satisfied myself that the odds of safety were on my side.  And, indeed, they have been so far this year as I have been signally un-stung.  Though I am aware that last statement is a hostage to fortune, especially given the prevalence of ghostly retribution swimming about in the waves around us.  But I have faith.

Tomorrow, with a rare sense of occasion, we have been invited out to a barbecue on the only day in recent weeks that is scheduled to have thunderstorms. 

Resultado de imagen de thunderstorms

Sometimes the irony of life is too obvious to be funny.