On the beach.

This was a local beach on a warm day last week. Yesterday the Sandman and I made it our own, he on his bike, me panting along with the Innocent Smoothies, matches and sausages to cook. Mistrustful youth had bought sandwiches too, for me to carry, reckoning that anything grandmothers try to do in the male department of fire-lighting and al fresco cooking is bound to fail. He wasn't even enthusiastic about collecting dry sea-weed and drift wood. Once the setting up began in the shelter of a re-inforced concrete anti-tank block (they can't even get rid of them by blowing them up!) he showed more co-operation digging a hole, finding big stones for the edges and making the little pyramid of starter grasses, seaweed, fir-cones, driftwood and so on. When the matches came out he was on top of it! We failed our Scout fire-lighting badge (if they still demand a two-match-only start)used a whole box and eventually the wood of the box as well, protecting the tiny flames from the wind with much care until I stood up to get rid of a cramp and the wind took over and we had - a fire!! Small, but once it was hot it was very, very hot and cooked four sausages impaled on green sticks and laid across between the stones. Triumph. This Child of the Times looked dubiously at the first sausage muttering about food poisoning. I told him about a disastrous hike with the Guides in the rain when my patrol got lost and we ate raw sausages with cold baked beans so hungry were we. No grit the young these days. He has more grit now as the sausages were crunchy with blown sand. Still, it was a success.