Flaming Nora

Inspired by someone I follow on twitter but have never met, I went to the beach today. Now then, I go to the beach often as I live just four streets away from the sea-front and walking on the beach is one of my most favourite things to do, in the world, ever. But today, inspired by Beach Buoy I took a carrier bag with me for my walk on the beach.  Beach Buoy also lives by the sea, a little further down the coast from where I live. He tweets pictures of his walks showing things he's found. And he's found some amazing things - a message in a bottle, for instance, old pottery, broken shards of history.   He blogs his finds here . He also carries out a 15 minute beach clean and that was my inspiration today.  On my beach walk I took a bag and without deliberately looking for plastic on the sand, if I came across any I picked it up and popped it in my bag. Our local beaches are more or less clean, so when I started my walk (which lasted an hour, 30 mins to the rock...

The joys of living on the coast are endless. And one of the things I enjoy the most is collecting sea-glass and interesting stones.  Here are two pictures from my collection and you can see a few more pictures here . I originally created the sea-glass stars as Christmas tree ornaments - there's a picture of them here all lit up and sparkling .  Now, they're hanging in our conservatory, catching the sunlight and looking magical. ______ I'm on twitter @flaming_nora

See also:  Personal Pebbles My collection of sea-glass is growing, slowly. Ok, it's growing very slowly and it's not as vibrant as I'd like just yet but that's because the beach where I live next to doesn't have a great deal of the stuff.  And when I do find sea-glass on the sands, it's mainly clear or blue and green pastel.  Not that blue and green pastel doesn't have a beauty of its own, it does. But there's a navy blue sea-glass in there that I adore and I'm still hoping and searching for a red or a pink. 

Regular readers know I'm a displaced northerner living in that London place. Going 'home', especially at Christmas, brings a strong sense of place and a wonderful feeling of quiet serenity that I've yet to find in the big city. And when you're born, bred and brought up living by the sea, by 'eck, you don't half miss it when you're landlocked in London.