The beach monsters cometh...

It’s been a while since I stumbled across anything on the beach. Somehow my Dali giraffe still eludes me, although this might have become it I guess. No matter, I was happy enough to see this visitor cranking its way along the sand the other day. Of course when I say happy, that’s a purely relative term.

Even though it is the start of the beach monster season, it isn’t everyday that you bump into a sea tank, one of those horrible semi-machines which harvest humans from coastal settlements for reasons that are never made clear in one of my favourite books by John Wyndham. The Kraken Wakes, if you’ve never read it, then you probably should. The premise of the tale is that aliens come to Earth and inhabit the deep seas, managing to change the currents and melt the polar ice caps. The world is flooded with people living on closely guarded islands as the sea tanks continue to spirit away any survivors to suffer God knows what fate. I won’t tell you how it ends; it’d spoil it; although the UK and the US publications have different endings, with the UK version not being quite as bleak.

This little monster wasn’t as terrifying as all that. Maybe its waste wood and rubber pipe legs, plastic baker’s tray body, and traffic cone top head appendage give it a sense of quirky comedy that a real monster from the deep simply wouldn’t possess.

And I don’t think this chap eats people.

I know, I know, why would anyone waste their time on a thing like this. Well, lets just say I have the time and leave it at that shall we?

I really must read The Kraken Wakes again. Perhaps I’ll try to get hold of the American version, I quite like a bleak ending.