Fossil for the Future

I have UK size 12 feet. That to me is one of the wonders of nature; my feet seem to be entirely commensurate with my generous stature. I suppose that if they were size 6, I’d be constantly falling over. But I don’t or, at least, infrequently. The last time I can remember doing so was when I tripped over an deceptive curb stone on a pavement in New England – American pavements, or sidewalks as they so prosaically call them, are if anything worse than ours. Perhaps that’s because, as we’re always being told, nobody walks anywhere.

Anyway my feet, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, lead a fairly autonomous existence down there at the bottom of my legs. And it must be a merry life judging by the evidence I see whenever I manage to bend down that far. There they are, large, off-white limb ends, covered in bumps and bruises. I know for a start that the little toes are forever out-and-about, wrapping themselves around bedposts or the corners of wardrobes and rubbing themselves up against tight fitting shoes until the skin hardens. Masochistic little beggars, they are! How the other toes must laugh!

Well that’s all bye-the-bye and only tangentially connected to today’s image. Last weekend Pixie and I were out walking the waterlogged fields around our village. Why, heaven only knows. Perhaps we’d got a bit stir-crazy, unable to travel but feeling the need for fresh air (we could have just sat in the conservatory with the doors open but where’s the fun in that). Suddenly I felt the urge to photograph a footprint. And lo! There was one.

Now I don’t know what sort of boot made this print; that’s the stuff of Sherlock Holmes and forensic science. In all probability it was a Wellington. (Incidentally my Wellingtons are a size too small; when I wear them all my toes indulge in self-harm). As I knocked off a couple of shots of the muddy prints I fell to thinking about fossils (and about whether we had any crumpets for tea or perhaps a muffin but that’s another story).

I could imagine palaeontologists in the distant future (assuming the human race or a derivative of it lasts that long) poring over a cast of the footprint. Was it from an intelligent life form? (Doubtful). Why was it there? How did it become a fossil? Did it have sausage, bacon, beans, mushrooms and crusty granary toast for breakfast? What other evidence had come from the excavation of the site? Were the fossilised televisions, petrified sofas, rust marks of a disintegrated freezer of any significance? All these things and more were in the hedges around me, evidence of a great deluge, ready to be immortalised in the geological series. Potent signs for the years to come.