A RECIPE FOR ROBINSON’S SALAD

Ingredients

1 bunch seaweed

1 jellyfish

4 limpets

Foot after foot just follow your feet. Towards the tide. Grey tops collapsing onto one another. Don’t drink the water. Fire down the coast. Old power station. Plumes drifting upwind. Avoid acrid smoke. Blocks of masonry jutting from the sand, concrete cubes, some kind of military architecture, pillboxes. No one. No one for weeks. No one for years. No one. No footprints.

All gone. Just gone. Taken. Must have been taken. How else. Where else. People don’t just go. The imprint of Sarah’s head in her pillow, traces of scent around the sheets, which one, chanel, number five, slippers on the ground. Sarah gone. Taken. Taken. Forces beyond my ken.

Follow a stream trickle rivulet down to a rock pool. Plunge arm in to elbow. Pull out a handful of seaweed – some kind of bladderwrack. Bad eating but better than nothing.

Blanch the seaweed in salted water. Drain and toss with sesame oil.

Void on the radio. Dead static. Voices in there if you listen hard enough. Voices everywhere if you listen too hard. The mind makes voices. Like this one. This one.

Nothing on the telly. There’s nothing on the telly again. Darling. Nothing. Interference. No broadcasts. The mast at Elmley Moor still standing but no one at the studios. Masts one, people nil.

To the left a jellyfish. Sand plasma. Wibble wobble on a plate. Watch the sting. Scoop it with sand beneath into the bucket. Wash sand off later. Pickle it maybe.

Remove the tentacles following the instructions on page 32. Dice the body of the jellyfish. Marinade in the rice vinegar mix for at least six hours.

Limpets on the rocks. Take knife from boot holster, prise the fattest ones off. One, two, three, four, five, once I caught a fish alive. Keeps the spirits up does singing. Hah! That’s a good one. What’s the use in worrying, it never was worthwhile. WHILE!

Troubles troubles troubles. The trouble starts when it’s out your head. In here’s all fine. So pack up you troubles in your old kit bag and smile boys smile.

Boil the limpets. Chop them. Treat them like clams.

Serve with a foam made from the shellfish reduction.