Every so often you’ll come across a stone on the beach that someone has written on. Sometimes the text will be simply rude or banal: ‘Tracy is a slag’ or ‘Susan luvs Damien’ or ‘George is a wanker’ but occasionally you’ll find one with something a little more complex inscribed on it. These are invariably anonymous, like the one I found today (pictured here). It doesn’t matter if these thoughts are original or not. Clichés are clichés because they link us together as beings who share the same hopes and uncertainties.

Why do we leave these particular kinds of messages on stones? You won’t find the same thoughts carved into a tree, or on a toilet wall (well, you’ll find the ones about Tracy, Damien and George, but these are endemic) and why leave them on the beach? Is it because here the messages are more likely to be lost, like the thoughts themselves; words lost like droplets in the sea. They are, because of their nature, addressed to complete strangers, or to those who are unlikely to ever find them, and even if they did, would not know where they came from.

A while ago I was discussing these messages with a friend at work. He confessed having once written ‘I love you’ on a beach pebble only to find, a few months later, the same stone on the desk of one of the administrators. Of course he never told her that it was he who’d written the message, and yet it seemed to both of us strange that the intimacy with which she valued these words was entirely different and private to his original intentions.