At my suggestion, we went for a walk along the bottom of the cliffs at Pegwell Bay this evening around 8.00pm - it was an hour or so before low tide, and we walked along the chalk platform, spotting birds, and the large number of shellfish there. I have never established whether we can eat the mussels there or not, so I haven't. There were quite a few open empty oystershells here and there, and a number of oystercatchers (who presumably enjoy whelks, mussels, winkles and limpets too, as there weren't many oysters). I started reciting The Walrus and the Carpenter one of the few poems I know by heart (one of the others is Jabberwocky which tells you all you need to know about my childhood reading) M joined in - his memory of it is less perfect, and we did lose a couple of lines.
After a while, scrunching across the rocks and feeling guilty that I was walking on a mussel nursery, we began to discuss human development. I was thinking how running with a javelin was (I think) one of the original Olympic games - obviously a very necessary hunter-gatherer skill. M pointed out that running on 2 legs was one of humanity's major achievements, but that for the first 40,000 years of homo sapiens existence there were very few innovations - why everything hotted up suddenly is one of the great mysteries. I am going to argue in my talk about the Olympics that some of the games probably go back to exercising the necessary skills of hunter gathering, as well as things like wrestling - which were clearly mainly for fun?
As usual we discussed the rock, the layers of flints, the frost cracks, the loess etc. There is something about Pegwell Bay - the geology is so "in your face" that you can't help consider issues such as evolution, biology, how people have lived. No wonder Dyce chose it for his picture reflecting on Darwin... Strange how I've loved that picture all my life, ever since I first saw it in the Tate Gallery, and now I can re-create it, minus crinoline and stout boots (summer trousers and trainers). If you turn your back to Ramsgate and look out across the landscape at dusk before the lights come on, you can imagine people living there, coming down to take mussels from the rocks, perhaps to climb down the cliffs for the fulmars' eggs...perhaps because the geology isn't that ancient relatively (the loess is really only a few thousand years old - well more, but post glaciation) one does tend to imagine relatively early humans whether hunter-gatherers or agriculturalists, hanging around there - of course the coast would have looked different then.
It was a lovely sunset - with a broad band of filthy smog over the Channel glowing purple, strange greens and turquoise in the sky. Fabulous. It was strange, we haven't done anything like that for ages. Perhaps we'll do Botany Bay tomorrow... I was reflecting on the way home that it had been rather like taking an outing with an old friend, intermittent talk, not much laughter though - and plenty of time for silent contemplation. Perhaps this is it - the companionate marriage. The best a man can get? He always tells me what a great companion I am for him (not in those exact words, but that's what he means). But is it the best thing for me? There was a certain happiness from being out under the sky, and looking at things, but it wasn't really a shared happiness somehow. Perhaps it's my fault, I've forgotten to share stuff with him, or given up bothering. Oh bugger.
After a while, scrunching across the rocks and feeling guilty that I was walking on a mussel nursery, we began to discuss human development. I was thinking how running with a javelin was (I think) one of the original Olympic games - obviously a very necessary hunter-gatherer skill. M pointed out that running on 2 legs was one of humanity's major achievements, but that for the first 40,000 years of homo sapiens existence there were very few innovations - why everything hotted up suddenly is one of the great mysteries. I am going to argue in my talk about the Olympics that some of the games probably go back to exercising the necessary skills of hunter gathering, as well as things like wrestling - which were clearly mainly for fun?
As usual we discussed the rock, the layers of flints, the frost cracks, the loess etc. There is something about Pegwell Bay - the geology is so "in your face" that you can't help consider issues such as evolution, biology, how people have lived. No wonder Dyce chose it for his picture reflecting on Darwin... Strange how I've loved that picture all my life, ever since I first saw it in the Tate Gallery, and now I can re-create it, minus crinoline and stout boots (summer trousers and trainers). If you turn your back to Ramsgate and look out across the landscape at dusk before the lights come on, you can imagine people living there, coming down to take mussels from the rocks, perhaps to climb down the cliffs for the fulmars' eggs...perhaps because the geology isn't that ancient relatively (the loess is really only a few thousand years old - well more, but post glaciation) one does tend to imagine relatively early humans whether hunter-gatherers or agriculturalists, hanging around there - of course the coast would have looked different then.
It was a lovely sunset - with a broad band of filthy smog over the Channel glowing purple, strange greens and turquoise in the sky. Fabulous. It was strange, we haven't done anything like that for ages. Perhaps we'll do Botany Bay tomorrow... I was reflecting on the way home that it had been rather like taking an outing with an old friend, intermittent talk, not much laughter though - and plenty of time for silent contemplation. Perhaps this is it - the companionate marriage. The best a man can get? He always tells me what a great companion I am for him (not in those exact words, but that's what he means). But is it the best thing for me? There was a certain happiness from being out under the sky, and looking at things, but it wasn't really a shared happiness somehow. Perhaps it's my fault, I've forgotten to share stuff with him, or given up bothering. Oh bugger.
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