How to build a giraffe…

Another beach, another pile of wash-up. This time wooden fencing posts, plenty of them. Fantastic, with all that wood I might be able to build my giraffe at long last. Every time I hit a beach with the ‘mood’ upon me I know that I’m going to build a giraffe - tall and spindly, high in the air, balanced and beautiful, a giraffe for the very Dali himself to be proud of.

I had the wood, now all I needed were some other materials – maybe some polythene sheeting, a few plastic bottles, a largish quantity of string or rope, something ‘head shaped’ for the head. They needed to be light, I wanted this giraffe to be at least ten feet tall, and heavier materials were going to be – well, too heavy. So, polythene, bottles, string, lightweight stuff - the sort of stuff that any self-respecting beach in our part of Wales is always bedecked with.

I walked the beach – plenty of wood, great, more wood, fantastic, seaweed, mmmm, more wood, okay, more seaweed, ahhh, a short length of frayed orange twine…

I walked the beach for a while clutching my piece of orange twine. Where was the polythene sheeting, the plastic bottles, the string, where was that ‘head shaped’ something for the head? All I could see stretching in front of me was a beach littered with fencing posts and draped with seaweed. How was I going to make my giraffe with only these limited materials at hand? This was going to be a real challenge.

An hour or so later I happened across this funny creature, he’s a woolly mammoth, a small one admittedly, but a woolly mammoth nonetheless.

And my giraffe? Well, maybe next time.