Pausing to gaze across the water, I noticed a little sound I’d never heard before. I looked down to see hundreds of tiny colourful pebbles being dragged into the backwashing wave of the ebbing tide. I was brought up by the sea, and I’ve walked this beach near my current home many times already, but had never stopped to listen to this sound, or watched the pebbles as they chattered and bounced like an excited bunch of miniature Boxing-Day swimmers dashing into the waves together. There had been no Boxing Day swim to witness this winter. For me, just a walk up this same beach with a friend. I remember us each selecting a precious piece of treasure to take home from the shore. We’d both been attracted to stones with round holes washed smooth by the waves. Mine was a piece of terracotta brick which I’ve used in today’s image to make a pattern, providing the blocks for my walker’s “map”. I enjoyed the soothing repetition of drawing round its wave-washed lines, each shape with its own little round window – a porthole for the imagination to wiggle through.