SoCs March 26

With his navy blue jersey and black tar-hardened breeches his be-whiskered, weather-creased features formed a half smile as he sat upon the black and white iron bollard. Reaching down with his left hand he lazily stroked the rope sitting loosely on the jetty. He remembered the days when he too had worked with ropes and spars, thick hawsers and thin guy ropes, all had passed through his bent, gnarled, rough-skinned fingers. He could tell where every piece of Manila, hemp or coir had once been grown ready for harvesting and making up into the ropes that secured ships and boats throughout the world. All of them natural, lovingly twisted into multi-usable things. Now the ropes were all man-made, manufactured from plastic, never rotting, floating for ever when discarded, trapping birds, damaging all sea life, more debris in the corruption of the seas.