Pipefish.

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I seem to spend an awful lot of time on the road.

I drove back from Wales last night and the route I usually take was closed with no warning. I had to backtrack and take a thirty mile detour, so it was really late when I eventually got in.

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This morning I got up at six so that I could be in Scarborough by nine. I don't mind early starts and was so happy when I avoided the usual crush of jammed traffic around Leeds. It didn't last though - the AI was closed and I lost over an hour trying to get onto the A64.

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The traffic wasn't too bad on the way home, but I got thinking about stuff and missed my exit. It didn't take me to far out of my way but by the time I was back on track the traffic had built up and... well, we all know how that song goes.

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So why am I telling you this? I'm not really, I'm really talking to myself. Sometimes I wonder why I spend so much time rushing from one place to another in what can sometimes seem like such a pointless meander.

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Pipefish are wanderers. They meander here, change direction and swim off there. They're related to seahorses (as you can probably see from the shape of their heads) and they rarely stay in one place for very long - continually moving from one place to another looking for food or a mate.

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As you must know by now I love beach combing. There is something about finding something washed up by the sea that makes it precious - even if 'intrinsically' it isn't. I have a collection of very precious fishing net floats - all sizes, all colours; red, orange, yellow, blue, grey, white, black - an old wooden oar, pebbles (of course), and my Pipefish.

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In ten years of hardcore beach combing I have only managed to find about one a year - and I look for them all the time. You usually find them in the flotsam at the head of the beach mixed in with the weed and sticks. Because they have an external skeleton they have usually dried hard, like fingernails. They don't take very long to dry out and they don't smell, there really isn't any flesh to rot.

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I caught a live one last year in a pool at Criccieth. We were shrimping. I'll tell you about shrimping another time, it's almost the season. I held it in my hand, it was like holding one of those jointed wiggly wooden snake toys that you can buy - only much, much thinner. I thought about keeping it, killing it, adding it to my collection. But no - so I put in back into the sea and let it meander away.

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Traffic and Pipefish, is there a connection? Probably - I was certainly thinking about Pipefish when I missed my turning.

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Anyway, this is a picture of my Pipefish 'found things' sculpture. I think Eileen Agar would have liked it.