Explore

Grey seal followed me the whole length of the cove this morning, ten yards out, never once looking away. Didn't feel like being watched. Felt like being walked home.

Down on the Lizard there's a green-and-red stone called serpentine, mottled like an adder's back, and you'll hardly find it anywhere else in Britain. When it's wet on the beach at Kynance, it glows. I don't take pebbles off the beaches anymore. They're needed where they are, holding back the sea. Instead I bought a little offcut from one of the old turners' workshops, polished on his lathe. It sits on the windowsill by the tide table. When a storm's rolling in, I hold it and watch. Something about a stone that was once the floor of an ancient ocean makes the waves feel less personal.