MORECAMBE MOON
“Jian –
don’t go. The moon is too full and I sense danger.”
“Mother –
I must work. We owe the bosses so much money.”
Jian
looked at his sleeping wife – she and the baby were both feverish after the
birth in the crowded lorry with his hand muffling Chyou’s cries, but they had no
money for doctors.
Jian was
picking on the cockle-bed hours later, thigh-deep in seawater and listening
nervously for the whistle to call his team ashore.
It never
sounded. The spring moon had pulled the tide too high too quickly, and the whistle-man
was the first to drown.
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The moon affects all kinds of tides, in our bodies as well as in the oceans. This photo prompt brought back memories of a heart-breaking disaster in Morecambe Bay in 2004, in which 21 Chinese slaves drowned when the tide caught them unawares. Slavery is never totally eradicated, despite all the laws against it. Read all about it on Google.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Morecambe_Bay_cockling_disaster
