Sea glass

Spent the afternoon at the beach with my sister, her husband and combined, our four children. Typical sort of day. My kids refused to eat lunch before we left, and so were told that they would not get anything to eat while we were out and would have to wait until we got home again, whenever that happened to be. Well, this became a much nastier and more neatly reformed form of torture when my sister announced that her kids hadn't eaten and they were going to the restaurant. Now a beach restaurant in Spain serves a great deal more than rot-dogs and coke. We had GEORGEOUS bread, my sister had a paella with huge shrimps and three other kinds of shellfish, my brother-in-law had steak and luscious looking fries and grilled veg, and the kids had lovely pasta with rough grated cheese. All the while my poor children were forced to watch. I did bring some water. I hadn't intended to be quite that mean, but as we had all made our beds so to speak......

After lunch we went down to just the coolest climber and the kids were in heaven. It had buckets on pulley systems with rotating crane arms, and tubes you could pour the sand into and trap doors to let it out and the kids played for three hours. All the while my sister and I , she is an MBA grad and I have, shall we say, different priorities joked with them about their managment worker relations, and top-heavy organisations and succession planning problems. Finally invited to mediate between management kids and worker kids, I showed my true colours and declared myself neither worker nor manager but instead a dead beat and went off sea glass hunting.

Now for those of you unaware of the beauties of sea glass, it is the polished and rounded glasss thrown up by the waves. Usually white or clear, green and brown. Beer and liquor bottles. Rarer is blue and rare to virtually non-existent is red, yellow and orange. It is fun to look for. I was never much of a beach person until I spent three years traveling in a boat in the Bahamas, but it is a bit like an easter egg hunt, and there is always another egg if you just keep looking. Better still, I've a friend who makes jewlery from it and sells it in Martha's Vineyard and Boston, so I don't have to clutter up my life with the goodies after I am done. Happiness all around.
They are so lovely too. Glistening jewels on the beach in such interesting shapes, some two-toned glass even. The pieces where I am hunting here are generally small, but beautifully and deeply coloured, with an unusual number of reds and oranges and yellows. Exciting to find, fun to hunt for and a gift for a friend all rolled into one.
.....Sea beans in another post......