The Murexes

On another cold, unremarkable walk along Golspie beach this morning I was recalling this one. It's not the most prepossessing of beaches, not compared with so many of Tanzania's white, coral strands, with almost black sand and a pervasive smell from the mangroves that lined it, yet it will stay in my memory for....

....these shells, of which there were several along the high-tide mark. They're murexes, the larger one probably Murex ramosa, the rock murex.

I was thrilled to find them because, when I was a boy along the Kenya coast, I had had to buy myself a murex because I had never managed to find one myself. Suddenly, I was surrounded by several fine specimens,

Yet I didn't keep one. Times have changed on East Africa's coasts, from an era when there were so many shells it didn't seem to matter how many we took, to a time when these beaches have been so pillaged that one feels oneself fortunate to find even one good specimen in a morning's wandering.