Nature has a way of making everything in its power symbolic of something or other. Here’s a selection of potential metaphors I collected from Bridlington beach – free to a good home.
- Clumps of ruined sandcastles that once stood proud and tall
- Jagged fragments of mussel shells that’ll scratch you if you don’t watch out
- The tide that already looks distant is retreating even further
- The UV rays you don’t feel because of the breeze, which doesn’t make them any less harmful
- Lines drawn in the sand that become less defined with time, replaced with natural grooves that no one can affect or influence
- If you hold sand too tightly it slips between your fingers
- Each individually brilliant grain of it looking generally the same in the company of many others
- Seagulls swooping for anything neglected, which their numbers suggest they always find
- Flags flapping so violently you can’t tell what they represent
- The blurred glimmer of light from inside the public loos
- Sunglasses hiding what people are thinking, or where they’re looking
- Pools of water built on sand where footprints disappear faster than they’re formed
- The apartments overlooking are pristine – but no one’s home
- Ball games undermined by the wind they thought wouldn’t matter
- A motorised dinghy no match for the chopping waves, even though it tries harder
- Swimming shorts holding on to the thighs they cover – but only when wet
- A toddler cries next to a mossy wall that’s a thousand shades of green
- You’ve got to blink, not rub, the sand out of your eyes
- Everyone confuses seaweed pods with bubblewrap at some point
- Baseball caps clinging to matted fringes, clinging to sweaty foreheads
- Contextless feathers intriguing no one
- A parked tour bus’s livery framed accidentally perfectly between a gap in the railings
- It’s easy to forget the seagulls look sideways rather than forwards
- The metal detector man searching for value he can’t see
- Territorially placed volleyball nets
- How funny that everyone knows to plan around the cooling of the day
- How difficult it is to get up when you’ve been sat down for so long
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