Pebble Dash & Pick. Monday 26th August 2024
Pebble dashing as a zen exercise and other musings.
Like many seafront denizens I am drawn to the flotsam that comes ashore and ways of repurposing it. Not the numerous plastic discarded consumer items that we sadly have to gather on the Dash. I will leave that to the keener creative eye of Emma (more about her another time) the city banker turned one woman volunteer army/trash artist cleaning the beaches of hastings for the last 7 years. No I’m drawn to the more traditional kind of thing that brings out your underused creative urges – drift wood, old sea defences, ropes, buoys. A lot of buoys. There’s a whole in my garden wall that has long needed repair and it was only yesterday that I embarked on putting the (bordering on hording) collection of old strandline sea defence wood wood to use to fill that hold in what I hope is an artful (if slightly naff Airbnb seaside boho style) way. To my eye a beautiful collection of likely tragic ancient hardwoods, fell and sawn to be used as our sea defences, the wooden groynes that we hurdle, that contain our beach as the sea dumps the shingle inexorably eastward. Now the timbers have worn thin (but still heavy and strong) by the action of thousands of tides rubbing shingle across them like some giant exfoliating scrub into smooth shapes around the giant iron bolts that fastened them.
It’s gonna look great I think. It’s what all this collecting of stuff is about. No need to rush the creativity. Respond to the materials provided by the universe. Smug? Very much.
But sadly my collection of upright timbers is not quite enough to span the gap leaving me with difficult choice for the unzen person I am. I must finish this today. I cannot wait to fix this unsightly gap in the wall despite not being listed with airbnb and literally no one but me and the neighbourhood cats paying any attention to the gap at all. I hastily nail some unsatisfactory inconsistent timbers to the cross rail muttering to myself that the universe would not provide me with appropriate sea defence timbers of the kind of ware, patina and size I need and that this will just have to do. The little novice artisan thwarted packs up his tools and winds down for the night, as tomorrow is Pebble Dash and an opportunity to relieve the stress of frustrated projects.
The universe laughs compassionately.
The next morning, in the glow of first light turning to full morning we start the 2nd official pebble dash. I can see my eager competitors pinging targets as the canter along the shingle. Effortless lunge swoops for cellophane wrappers, cans, bottles like seagulls plucking carelessly guarded ice creams. The discard of modern life strewn across the beach. Where once humans dropped fruit skins and husks, left midden piles of bones, flint shards and pottery we now leave – if man were to vanish and the beaches frozen in this state for some imagined future archaeologist – exotic polymers with trace residue of cheaply
manufactured sugars. Instead of old fire places in old hunting and gathering camps that looked out over savannahs we have discarded disposable barbecue grills and boxes of chicken bones looking to horizons of shipping lanes. The endless chicken boxes remind of “The History of the World in 7 Cheap things” in which the author points out chicken remains number in the high trillions around the world and aliens might think they were the dominant species. As a further aside did you know that only 3% of the animal life on Earth now is wild? Not so surprising when you look at the relics on the beach.
The dash continues. The recent full moon tides and high winds have pushed the shingle about into steep fine slopes (what is the science of granules known as? Does anyone study these physics?), that are taxing on the thighs. We haven’t worked out the exact points scoring system for the Dash yet: is it a time based race with final time discounted according to rubbish collected? Or is it points based on weight and/or number of pieces of rubbish collected, bonuses for practical items and final position? Please let us know what you think.
Either way I make a point of bee-lining for rubbish that is clearly in my competitors path even if that means a travalator (children of the English 90’s will get me) run back up a steep bank eroding beneath my churning feet. Bad Murray Walker auto-commentary going all the way.
And then I see it. The missing piece of the puzzle.
Half submerged in the shingle is a long piece of sea defence wood, speckled with barnacles with a hipster beard of seaweed. Aching for a place in my artistic fence it is. The universe provides, often in its own time, but just sometimes, right away. Especially if you get out and run.