TALKING
A LOAD
OF SAND
PETE HARRISON
Don't touch the coral, they say. But where else do they expect us to sit? Do they know what it is down there - in-between the reefs? Do they really appreciate what that stuff is, snaking its way along the coral canyons, smothering the seabed in great golden blankets?
Sand, that's what they call it. But that's just a cover - a marketing gambit thought up by some slick-haired PR whizz-kid. Call it sand, they laughed, they'll never figure out the difference - the fools.
But I know the score. I've seen it being made. Parrotfish poop - that's its true identity! I kid you not, hiding behind that finely honed identity, that good-as-gold, silky-smooth facade, is the excrement of a thousand scaly parrotfish.
And this is more than just idle speculation. It's science.
I read it in a paper. Not a tabloid, a real scientific paper, by someone with letters after their name, who uses complicated words, arranged into long, thick, lumpy, sentences; sentences that make your eyes bulge and water as you strain to force them out. "Parrotfish," it read, "are the primary producers of sand within the coral-reef ecosystem, which they produce by ingesting the calcareous exoskeleton of coral colonies, and excreting it in its powdered form."
I don't need to hear more. I know where I'm kneeling the next time I clear my mask.
This revelation also puts a whole new light on that sand-filled egg-timer that sits in my kitchen. My eggs will never taste the same again, after I've watched four-minutes' worth of excrement stream through a tight hole.
But my problem pales beside those facing the people of the Middle East - just wait until they realise they're all living on a vast pile of dung. It would send the most patriotic of Arabs running to their West End flats. I predict a mass migration. Never mind the oil, they'll say - I ain't digging through all that sand to get to it.
And that's why you won't find me kneeling on the sand to clear my mask. I'll be sitting on the coral. Besides, it's designed for the job: all those nice, flat tables growing at just the right height, a slight depression at the centre to accommodate the tank. It would be a crime to let it go to waste.
Yes, I'll be lounging on the coral every time, and steering well away from the sand.
As for lying on the beach, I can think of nothing more repulsive - except perhaps being buried up to my neck in the stuff, or finding it in my sandwiches.
Of course, sitting on the reef is hardly politically correct. But then, what do they take us for, forcing us to sit in the sand? I mean, in the country do you ever see signs saying: "Don't tread on the grass - use the cowpats provided"? I think not. And just suppose they did, would we all blindly accept it?
Would a family out picnicking accept this nit-picking? Would they scan the fields to find the largest steaming quagmire in which to settle and eat their lunch? Would parkies stop mowing, and sharpen their litter-collecting spikes, ready to protect their precious lawns? And would elderly ramblers carefully kneel down on a crusty pat to wipe their steamed-up spectacles, mumbling as they did so how important it was to conserve the grass?
It all goes to show how quickly things change - but still remain the same. One day you're resting on the sand, happy as a sand-boy, the next you're like a pig in...
Appeared in DIVER - September 1999
