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On Christmas morning I found I was the first awake in the house.

I got out of bed, put on my runners and clothes. I decided to go to the beach. As an afterthought, I took my camera.

There was a man in a red coat walking his dog a few hundred paces away. Other than that, the beach was empty. Just me, the man and his dog, and the seagulls calling in a flock of white, mirrored in the flat tidepools.

I spent perhaps an hour photographing the marks the waves had made on the seabed. As the tide goes out, the imprint is left behind, rippling and curling across the sand.

Like ciphers. Lost messages.

Every high tide, the water comes in and miles of intricate patterns are wiped clean again, destroyed. You can't build in the sand. The sea will take it all back some day.

If you look closely enough, you can read what the ocean has written.

Every day, it begins again. Everything. Every morning, there will be a first set of footprints biting cleanly into the smooth sands. This place will be discovered all over again.

The sea rolls on, softly eating its secrets.