Apologies if you've been following this blog.  A gremlin got into my computer and fried the motherboard.  This meant I lost a lot of my photographs, and I'm still trying to have them recovered.  Then somehow a virus crept into this computer.  Buy your lucky white heather, as the late, great Rikki Fulton used to say....

Anyway, enough talk of bad luck for the moment.  This blog entry is going to be about a very pleasant day I had in St Andrews today.  I went along with a friend to the opening of the new Fraser East Gallery at 47, South Street, St Andrews to see the exhibition of Malcolm Cheape's work.  It's on until the 17th July, so, if you're in the area go see it.

An ice cream at Jannetta's, then we took ourselves down to Castle Beach.  My friend, Jan, has started a jewellery business called Sea Glass of St Andrews, and it was such a lovely day that we thought we'd beach-comb to see if we could find some sea glass.

For those of you who haven't heard the term before, sea glass is the name for the weathered pieces of glass that you find washed up on the beach after a storm.  It comes in some remarkably beautiful shapes and colours but can be difficult to spot among the small pebbles on the tide-line.  Another name for it is mermaid's tears.

I had instructions from Jan to collect any unusual bits of pottery I might find as well, so, when I found a round, flat lump of what looked like clay, black in the middle with a terracotta edge, I added it to the collection.  I thought it was maybe one of those old 70s ashtrays that were fashionable way back in the day.

I was wrong.  As I turned it over to show Jan it became very apparent that what I'd found was this...

 

It looks like somebody has been having MUCH worse luck than me.