Lovely Lichen... In Mount's Bay.

Even on the greyest of Winter mornings, there is always something to catch the eye when meandering along the coastline path that borders Mount's Bay, leading away from Penzance towards Marazion.

Typically, the waves were crashing along the vast stretches of pebble shore with the clattering swash and dragging backwash on the shingle. The wind blustered, sending the seagulls on perilous flight, but closer afoot were the granite bolders, with their striking smatterings of lichen!

Some of these were incredibly vivid in colour, with their bright golden aureoles 'flowing' and bursting across the stony surfaces, as ink drop diffusions, spreading out repeatedly, in a multitude of different shapes and shades.

Others, meanwhile, were more subtle with delicate lacy clusters embroidered on rust-coloured stone or scaling over the weather-worn wooden fencing with feathery outshoots...

With this strange organic shroud, every surface becomes strangely ageless, or rather seems to acquire a patina of age and wisdom, witnesses of the passage of time and Life itself.