I’ve already mentioned in older posts how some stones I find lend themselves to being photographed, having one good angle that seems to exemplify its personality, while others need to be turned in your hand to fully appreciate the peculiarity of the object. The stone pictured above is another example of this latter category. One image doesn’t do it justice so I’ve decided to present here a page showing twelve different angles of the same stone, in the hope that it might convey more of its character. Even then, I’m not sure how well I’ve succeeded.

It’s quite small, a little larger than a nob of chewing gum. Probably a fossil washed along the coast from Eastbourne or Beachy Head and therefore, given the local geology, likely to date from the Cretaceous Period. It seems to have a kind of three-point symmetry, yet at the same time, the object as a whole is more organic than geometric, so this symmetry is somewhat obscure. Holding the stone and looking at it now, it seems to me that the best way to describe it is thus:

Imagine a pair of underpants stretched tightly around a loaf of uncooked dough, so that the elastic of the material bulges the dough out of the three openings designed for two legs and a waist, each of these extrusions of the dough ball remaining rounded as they protrude from their restricting bond. At the same time, the stone as a whole is reminiscent of an unbaked croissant or other kind of pastry where the dough has been folded over on itself to result in soft ridges, merging back somewhat into the main mass of the dough yet remaining distinct.

I think the above is an accurate description, but its banality undermines the strangeness of the object. It is, after all, a shape made of stone and ultimately, stones aren’t supposed to do things like this unless they are created as a cast of the remains of something long dead. Yet I’ve searched through all three volumes of my book of British fossils and can’t find anything like it. The closest in similarity are the echinoids (sea urchins) but all of these are based on variations of five-point symmetry not three. Part of me is annoyed at not being able to name it, but another part, I think the greater, takes huge delight in finding an object that seems to so elude classification.

“The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the cobblestone.”

Victor Hugo

Translated from the French: “La dernière raison des rois, le boulet. La dernière raison des peuples, le pavé.” in, ‘Oeuvres Illustrees de Victor Hugo’ (édition 1855)

“For in the midst of a stone not long since found at Chius, upon the breaking up thereof, there was seen –Caput panisci– enclosed therein, very perfectly formed, as the beholders do remember. How come the grains of gold to be so fast enclosed in the stones that are and have been found in the Spanish Baetis? But this is most marvellous, that a most delectable and sweet oil, comparable to the finest balm, or oil of spike in smell, was found naturally enclosed in a stone, which could not otherwise be broken but with a smith’s hammer.

Finally, I myself have seen stones opened, and within them the substances of corrupted worms like unto adders (but far shorter), whose crests and wrinkles of body appeared also therein as if they had been engraved in the stones by art and industry of man. Wherefore to affirm that as well living creatures as precious stones, gold, etc., are now and then found in our quarries, shall not hereafter be a thing so incredible as many talking philosophers, void of all experience, do affirm and wilfully maintain against such as hold the contrary.”

‘Of Quarries of Stone for Building’, in: ‘Elizabethan England’: from “A Description of England,” by William Harrison (in “Holinshed’s Chronicles”). Edited by Lothrop Withington, [1577, Book II., Chapter 11]

Driftwood worn smooth becoming a pebble; patinated stone masquerading as wood.

Those of you who’ve followed my blog for a while might be wondering what’s happened to the stone of the day collected pages, these having made regular appearances until a few months ago. Well wonder no more, here’s the first of several catch up pages of them.

I’d like to say that there have been less images of stones lately because there was so much else to photograph. Indeed there is some truth to this, Brighton has been jumping with activity this summer and I’ve found myself quite carried away with so many collisions between the everyday and the picaresque. But I confess, the main reason is because it’s harder to search for interesting pebbles when the beach is covered in people. They get in the way. Some days I could hardly see the shingle for bodies.

Also, combing the beach slowly and attentively, especially if you haven’t got a metal detector, can get you labelled as a weirdo, particularly since your audience consists of people wearing next to nothing. Indeed I suspect it’s far more dangerous to hang around bathers while carrying a camera, than creeping up on policemen, drunks and scallywags; something I’ve developed a bit of a penchant for.

And of course it’s harder to run away on pebbles.

“The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization”

Sigmund Freud

One fragment of a shell; one fragment of a shell fossil. Similar species, lived approximately ninety million years apart, both washed up on the same beach in the same week.

Found on Portslade beach on the weekend of International Workers Day, the May Day public holiday.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/01/may-day-history-international-workers-day

“I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale; handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail; only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick; I’m so mean I make medicine sick.”
(Muhammad Ali)