<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Easy when you know how<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n So you grab a handful of sand and let it run<\/p>\n through your sausage fingers<\/p>\n to catch the breeze<\/p>\n spinning off those grey, soapy waves<\/p>\n while one of us, I can\u2019t remember who,<\/p>\n sinks their teeth into an ice cream. We clear a spot<\/p>\n in the shingle among the fag ends<\/p>\n and plastic cups and engineer<\/p>\n a hollow to get comfy before we chuck stones<\/p>\n at seagulls. We watch the dark clouds\u00a0 that sweep in like your relatives,<\/p>\n slump beneath a sign that warns us not to litter or let our dogs shit<\/p>\n on the stones where we sit, still wolfing down dry cod and clay-cold chips<\/p>\n near a clump of locals making early in-roads into their pints.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And while there\u2019s not much talking going on we\u2019re settled on<\/p>\n this: we\u2019re happy to let the filthy wind<\/p>\n make our noses stream and flip gravel in our eyes,<\/p>\n for the likelihood of a wet arse , indigestion and the deep<\/p>\n tang of sewage and seaweed.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll accept the hidden dog turds, condoms and lolly sticks buried in the beach<\/p>\n we\u2019ll sip tea in the cafe while sheltering from drizzle and sticking to plastic seats.<\/p>\n When the sun comes out we analyse the filtered light.<\/p>\n We make our own weather forecast.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Niall Firth<\/strong> is a journalist who works for New Scientist. He lives with his wife and daughter in Walthamstow. He also lives on Twitter at @niallfirth where he divides his attention between science-y things and poetry things.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Easy when you know how So you grab a handful of sand and let it run through your sausage fingers to catch the breeze spinning off those grey, soapy waves while one of us, I can\u2019t remember who, sinks their teeth into an ice cream. We clear a spot in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6888"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6889,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6888\/revisions\/6889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}