Memories of An Old Fossil

A bit disorganised today it being my first day back in the office after nearly a week off, and especially after a long session trying to catch up on both my emails and Blip reading and comments. It is so easy to get out of sync, but I know it is not just me.

Haven't been out of the house yet today, so thought I would feature a still life from home yet again, but this time one that wasn't food orientated. Today's blip tells a little story of making the most of wet summer holidays and limited resources. It marks certainly the start of my obsession with perusing beach ephemera, as well as arguably the start of the cause of my developing knee joint problem

I am no amateur Palaeontologist for sure, but this is my very modest collection of beachcombed fossils. They were all gathered as a teenager from Easington beach, just north of Spurn Point, over several summers of the mid 70's. Not the most exciting place the East Riding of Yorkshire to spend boyhood summer holidays in a caravan (though my dad used to say it was better than going to 'Ourgate' at least).

With nothing much to do, I soon discovered that the rapidly eroding boulder-clay 'cliff line' of this coast actually fed the beach with a constant supply of fossils. These could be found along the beach strand-line, but only if one spent hours sifting through the pebbles like an archaeologist - one painstaking square metre after another. A typical day might only reveal about half a dozen small fossils, and most of these were small shell casts; Belemnites (bullet-like squid skeletons); and Chrynoids (star-shaped seaweed stems).

Here though are my top drawer finds, still retained to this day like a museum exhibit. These include three variously sized whole sea urchins; several small whole clam shells; a perfect Gryphaea or 'Devil's Toe Nail' shell; and my plum fossil: a whole two-sided Ammonite found as a whole stone with ridges visible, but chipped open with a chisel on both faces. Amazing feeling cracking that open I recall.

My Easington adventures ended suddenly one summer in 1976 when I had the audacity to ask my parents mid holiday if I could go home early on my own (I was bored, and there was this girl....). I was driven immediately to Hull and bundled onto the Leeds train in disgrace. I suppose that was the last holiday I ever spent with my mum and dad.

The fossils are sitting here in a pottery bowl I made during my post grad Diploma in 1985.