Shipwrecked...

People seem to expect me to find some answers to the puzzles in my life. I'm not sure that they understand this box I'm in - the way it clicks and moves in a hundred thousand ways, how once you think you have a solution you find that hundreds of moves ago you said a single wrong phrase.

I do.

So off I went to Wales to have a think, a good look, search for the answers. Well, I looked but I didn’t find - perhaps I was looking in all the wrong places.

I looked in the birds bustling on the bird table as they squabbled over seed and fat and nuts. I looked in the sea lapping at the shore, the inland wind making the surface of the sea flow out and on to the horizon. I looked in the flat grey cloud hanging over the mountain, reaching down to touch its old, scarred face, and making it wet with its dampness. I looked in my myriad of pots at seeds just beginning to force their way through the cold soil; they’ll flower late one day I expect. I looked in the cold white flicker of stars, ice chips caught in inky suspension – and yes, I looked in a few bottles.

No clues anywhere, not even a stuffed-in, plastic-bottled, note washed up on the chattering shore – “Help me. I’m shipwrecked.”

Waking along the shingle beach at Criccieth I came across a sea kale. Just the one; lush with new growth, floret heads like broccoli, curly leafed just like land kale - just a lighter green and thicker, almost succulent. Maybe there was an answer here? Reaching down I snapped off a small floret and popped it in my mouth; the greenness hitting my taste immediately, sea salt, the wind, the full moon, an oyster catcher’s cry – but no answers.

Yes, shipwrecked in my bottles. At least I'll have something to eat.