A Small Book + Day 10 of the Value Range Experiment

  This small book (115 pages including index and bibliography) about pebbles came from the charity book sale at Westleton last year.

 Words by Christopher Stocks and Illustrations by Angie Lewin.

Christopher Stocks lives by Chesil Beach, the strange 18 mile long shingle spit that stretches along the Dorset coast. Somehow the sea manages to grade the stones and pebbles from pea size to the eastern end where they are the size of a fist.

When asked about why he wanted to write a book about pebbles he always replied "how could I live on Chesil Beach and not want to write about pebbles?"

Angie Lewin lived in Norfolk and walked on the beach everyday picking up any interesting stones she found and using them in her art. Later she moved to Scotland and discovered the range of different stones on the Scottish beaches.

Dice Cup and Feather

Sea Pinks, Island Shore

The Beach, Aldeburgh

Chapter headings include 

Sir Mortimer at War

Picasso's Pebbles

Eminent Victorians

At the Natural History Museum 

and pages about the types of pebbles found on various beaches around our island.

This is what he writes about Shingle Street in Suffolk.........

The Clue is in the name. This isolated little scatter of houses on the south Suffolk coast overlooks a steep shingle beach which is also a Site of Special Scientific Interest, with a thriving population wild sea kale, horned poppies and tree mallows growing beyond the reach of the waves. The beach - mainly composed of flint pebbles - can be thought of as an extension of Orford Ness, the great bank of shingle that blocks the route of the River Alde at Aldeburgh and diverts it ten miles south until it finally escapes into the sea just north of Shingle Street. Accessible only by a single track road, overlooked by Martello towers and haunted by Avocets and Little Owls, it's a place of beautiful desolation.

I've been there a few times and it really is a strange place. There are ghosts .........

(info from Wiki)

Several buildings were destroyed during World War II, including the Lifeboat Inn.

After World War II many strange happenings were reported to have taken place at Shingle Street, including a failed German Invasion. Since the civilian population had been evacuated in May 1940, there were no eyewitness reports, although official documents remained classified until questions in the House of Commons led to their early release in 1993. These papers disclosed no German landing. Rumours of a failed invasion on the South and East Coasts were commonplace in September 1940 and helped to boost morale. Author James Hayward has proposed that these rumours, which were widely reported in the American press, were a successful example of black propaganda with an aim of ensuring American co-operation and securing lend lease resources by showing that the United Kingdom was capable of successfully resisting the German Army.

Burned bodies were reported to have washed up on the beach after the sea was covered in oil and set alight. I had a book about the story for a while 'The Bodies on the Beach' by James Hayward who, as mentioned above, decided it had never happened.

Day 10 of the experiment and the main meal was a roast dinner using a chicken thigh. I added roast potatoes and parsnip, the remains of the broccoli, gravy and a couple of the hilariously small Value Range Yorkshire puds that came from Asda (15 for 50p so I wasn't expecting much!)

I cooked a second chicken thigh at the same time to use in sandwiches for a few days.

Cost of things bought so far = £49.12p

Back Tomorrow

Sue