Red Coral

I apologise for this picture because I've used it before - link here - but every time I look at it I am reminded that Maziwi in Tanzania is about as close to paradise on Earth as one can imagine. It returns to memory because one of the many things I was very excited to find on this beach, in amongst an abundance of shells and sea urchin spines, was....

....these wave-broken fragments of red coral. I collected several different shades for the purpose of this photograph and returned them in due course to the beach because the island is a national nature reserve, but the reason I wanted to record them is that....

....my mother had a necklace made out of 1cm pieces of red coral, each with a small hole bored into it. She had it in Zanzibar, some eighty years ago, but later, after she returned to England, it broke, and I remember her saying that she ought to re-string it - so it was obviously precious to her, perhaps because of the memories it held.

She never repaired it but she kept the pieces and I, in my turn, have kept them, knowing there is a story behind them which I will never know.