If pushed for a reason to be cheerful, almost joyful, I would say that walking along the waterline at a beach, especially in Greece and searching for pieces of shiny worn edged glass.
I have a honey jar that I got in Greece that is full of these green and red, brown and opaque white pieces of glass.
What I like to do is get up early, before the sunbathers get to the beach and walk along the shore with my shoes in my hand and my head down, and where the water meets the sand in a frothy line, I look out for these little bits of glass.
Then I like to imagine where they come from.
Galleons probably.
On a good morning I will find maybe ten.
In the afternoon, when I'm bored with laying under my beach shelter that I have made out of broken umbrella poles and a shower curtain, I will go for another walk and look for more.
The day I leave to come back to England, I wash the pieces of glass and dry them and put them in the honey jar that I've kept for the purpose, roll them up in my beach towel and put them in my suitcase.
When I look at them in their jar back in England, they don’t shine as much, they’ve dried off and lost their gloss and I say to myself, "I should varnish them so they look just like the do when I find them on the beach."
But of course, I never get round to it.
Toni Le Busque
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