Covered in crab and grinning: the bad decision of the week

Posted: August 3, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Adventure Forever | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Yesterday we were at the Brickfields in Lower Halstow, Kent. There’s an intriguing history to this place, but finding out more about that is up to you – I’m busy blogging.

My family and I go there every once in a while, to be outside, watch the boats and the herons, and mainly to scroll through the mud and shells with our eyes and fingers, looking for preferable pottery.

‘Preferable pottery’ is what stands out most to you at the time. There are a million fractured segments of all kinds of earthworks there: the classic blue and white (which you can still find far from the estuary shore – in fields up hills), to glass bottle heads, brown jug handles, and pieces of pottery with an array of colours – depicting floral scenes, boats and ships, and sometimes words.

I like reading pottery – that’s my kind of preferable.

Yesterday’s preferable pottery read: “….ING THE TEETH & GUM…”

Underneath is featured what appears to be a glorious hair-do, or equally glorious wig.

My wife picked up one bit, for the obligatory fun of it (you could tell because she said so), my daughter picked up a few pink pieces, and my son a few hundred. My youngest daughter chose not to get involved, being 5 months young.

We only keep a few, sprinkling the rest back along the shore line, telling first-time visitors that we do this every week with our own supply of broken china to supplement the shoreline pottery becoming depleted.

Whilst my wife, son and youngest withdrew to eat M&Ms, my eldest daughter and I continued to search for pink pieces, and were quickly diverted in attention upon discovering we could explode crabs.

The long-dead, sun-dried crab corpses, which if you give a little finger-flick can cause them to explode in exactly the way you’d want a crab to explode.

We had a really great time, and my wife was horrified.

As my son raced over to take part too (who wouldn’t, aside from my wife?), I found a larger crab claw that was, I now know – regrettably, fresher.

Fresher – not fresh.

It wouldn’t explode, but giving it a little squeeze in the right places, you could penetrate the exoskeleton (most unpleasantly – this is all awful), and tug what I supposed to be tendons and make the claw pinch.

We all smiled.

And then a memory from the depths of our DNA, that crawls from the soul – up the spine – and straight out through the brain in all directions, said GET AWAY FROM THAT SMELL.

We all ran. Pursued by the stench.

The smell of rotten, long-dead-but-not-long-enough crab flesh was now all over me, my children, and worst of all – my finger tips, potentially ruining everything I was forth-hence to touch and even-more worst of all: type.

We all did that thing fathers, sons, and daughter do, which was to run separately in different directions whilst simultaneously arriving at ‘destination mother’ and, my word, we were loud and smelly.

My children demanded direct attention in some vague form, whilst I knew what I needed – babywipes, anti-bacterial gel, and for my wife to smell my fingertips.

Two out of three ain’t bad, but even as I write this 24 hours later, the pong is being bounced off my keyboard with every letter and I’m reminded of my bad decision of the week.

We went out for lunch afterwards, at a garden centre, whilst I walked like a surgeon post scrub-up, till making my way to the toilets and washing my hands multiple times before I caved in to desperation and slathered my hands in pure vinegar.

Nothing worked. Even time, known for decimating empires, wasn’t making a dent on this particular fragrance.

I’m going to be that guy who stinks of seaside-death, and slightly of vinegar, from here-on.

Still, at least the kids got to see the way a crab’s claw works. And the importance of hygiene.

Even from the worst decision of the week, there was an upside.

At some point we were covered in crab and grinning, albeit before the whiff.

Adventure forever.

Sam

The Crabs of St James’

Posted: November 22, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty., Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Have you ever been in St James’ Park tube station?

Does it give you the impression that it should have a crab problem?

I’ve asked; it doesn’t, but I can’t help but step off the train when passing through to wonder if I can hear the sea waves echoing down the tunnel, or the crunch of sand sifting between my smart work shoes.

I think Margate affected me.

Something about St James’s Park underground causes me to reminisce of the seaside.

Perhaps it’s the wall tiling, perhaps it’s the colours; it’s probably me.

And it probably is me because I would love so very much if you were to offer me the seaside as opposed to the capital.

London is not adorable, nor whimsical.

The most whimsical it gets is a degree of pomposity that endears it to the Japanese.

London at its most charming is the fact that the river leads elsewhere.

Unless of course we want to drool a little on the dreams of empire, with colossal great white buildings, lathered with muscular nudity and lions, British flags and stout-hearted pigeon poo.

During the empire, British men had muscular feet don’t you know, whilst our women were pleasantly plump as might be bespoke of some great artist of the era, conveying nobility, fertility, and justice via a patriotic curve of the hip.

Good form.

Hardly the seaside though, is it?

A bucket and spade no use in these gold-paved streets.

Still, I picture little crabs earnestly busying themselves sideways, creasing me to a smile as I hear in my head the sound of shelled scuttling on gold.

I wasn’t meant to get off at St James’ Park tube station.

Nor did I mean for a moment to step off the train and out of London.

But there you go, and there I went.

Like a grotto.

Hmm. 

Back to the crossword.