Mud lark up-date

 I covered a bit of my mud larking on here before. But here is an image sent to me by the Mersea Island Museum of their newly reformed Roman pottery display. It contains all the finds I have made over the years while mud larking there. All my items are on the two middle shelves on the right hand side. If you zoom in you can even see my name on the labels. I never asked for this but its nice that they did it. Not that anyone over that way will know who I am except my mum who has lived there for the last 30 years.  My connection with that Island goes way back to the 1960's.  My family had a very small caravan on a farm there called Waldegraves farm. We used to go there for all our summer holidays. Dad would drop us off then pick us up six weeks later. It was brilliant! Back then the island was so quaint and charming. We knew most of the others who had caravans there too as there were few. We also had my grandparents and some aunts and uncles cousins etc with caravans there too-all close by. It was like our whole family took up half of that area in summer.  You could count the number of caravans on the site back then. There was a tap where we queued to get our water and a small toilet block. It was primarily a farm with fields and farm animals all around. However, today the quaint feel has long gone and Waldegraves is now a huge sprawling holiday complex with pub restaurants showers the whole sorry shebang. Sad really.  I remember the wildlife was fab there when I was young. Fire flies, glow worms. Badgers, foxes, hares, birds of all kinds and swans on a huge wild pond where I used to catch eels.  I loved going out on the mud when the tide was out. I would get up in the early morning while everyone else was asleep- silently stepping over my brothers I would creep out and quietly shut the caravan door.  Then out on the mud to get to the sand banks further off shore. Out there I would find all sort of things. This was how my love of finding things started and my now love of history and nature grew from it all too. Without Mersea Island in my childhood I think I would have gone crazy in East London. Dont get me wrong, I loved all my mates there and I still do. But who knows what I would have become had the influence of my summer holidays not shown me there was a beautiful natural world out there. In a way, the small display above is like a small thank you from me. Thank you Mersea and please look after my dear ol mum!