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

How I’d Like to Go…

Posted: April 5, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: culture, writing | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What about if I were to simply explode?

I don’t think one can argue with dramatics at a time like that.

Plus the mess I make post-pop could provide work for the workless (I will be swept and mopped), meat (a tad hairy) for the hungry (I’m looking at you, lucky vultures) and a reminder of me as I used to be; wet, showing too much flesh and gradually making my way down your wall.

I can only apologise for the mess. If offended; feel free to concern yourself with the less-fine cuts.

Fertiliser is fertiliser after all.

Apologies also for the windows; at least we have people to deal with that for us; window washers. I hope they’re trained to such a degree as limbs on the pane.

If it weren’t for window washers we’d have to go about that extraordinarily simply task all alone with a sponge.

“All alone with a sponge.”

Let these words haunt us like the remnants of me snail-pacing myself down your window.

A real curtain-shutter.

I don’t know about you guys but I want to stab and burrow the little dot of an exclamation mark deeply into the Earth before I depart.

“BOOM” suits me nicely.

Just to be clear here; I’m not advocating any terrorist activity.

Don’t do that.

It’s bad for your health and the economy.

In particularly, MY health and economy.

Don’t touch my economy.

Terrorism in the form of faux-martyrdom (annihilating oneself and as many as possible of the unsuspecting non-believers around you) is cowardice in its most vulgar and blatant guise.

Heroes also suffer the throws of slings and arrows whilst they burden the daily and die slowly in an effort to improve the world (though relative).

If destroying yourself and the lives of those you haven’t even spoken to is your best method; you should really get out of the world-changing game because you are woefully unarmed on a planet currently dealing in and thriving on words and ideas.

Courage is all the more essential in matters that are slow and are accordingly all the more un-noted.

Exploding yourself and killing others is capitulation to the rigours of a worthy fight.

Not to mention that you disembarking a few dozen/hundred/thousand folk from the planet’s surface really is testament to how petty you are.

If all I’d achieved in my life was the murder of others; I’d consider the life a wasted one. Fortunately and tragically never to return.

Blow yourself up; leave the world unchanged (though of course there is now one less cunt in it).

I’d rather be all alone with a sponge.

Seriously.

In the meanwhile; I believe I was talking about my own preferred means of departure.

REAL CLASS is lacing oneself with explosives, enjoying a final meal of rare steak and (please) no lit candles, before making my way out into the desert/mountain top/bridge of your own cute little boat (let’s keep it secluded, eh fellows?) and having a good long think.

Follow that think, whatever it might have consisted of, and push the button.

Probably the red one.

Exploding must be one hell of a sensation; though admittedly brief.

They say a head decapitated is still open to thought and sensation for several seconds.

Curious.

Perhaps it is alike to the chicken running headless around the farmyard in what it hopes is the least axe-like direction.

Time to kill, post-suicide, eh?

If only my head remained; I think my options would become wonderfully limited and clear.

Can’t say “Ow” (though appropriate). Can’t sing (though appropriate; exploding really is breath taking). No final soliloquy.

Only one thing for it.

Give the sky a big kiss and continue rolling.

Mwah (you get one too).

It won’t change the world, but since it’s your life; do as you choose with it.

Plus; worms need grub too.

Bugger off in the style you deem most appropriate.

That’s what I’d like to do.

That’s how I’d like to go.

I would, of course, fiercely recommend living that life first.

It is ever-so-somewhat the point.

Mwah,

Sam

(PS. I likely have much more to say on the variety of topics covered here; I’ll get to them at some point. Probably not sponges and window washers though; I don’t know how they happened.)