Worshipping seaweed

‘So. Jeremy. Why do you want to learn about eating seaweed?’ said Ingrid as we trooped down the leafy farm track to the beach. Ingrid, our leader for the day, was a spry woman in her early fifties wearing a hand-stitched buckskin Hiawatha tunic and possibly little else. She was going to show us how to identify, harvest, prepare and cook a four-course seaweed ‘feast’ over a driftwood fire. I was preparing myself for the collapse of civilisation, I told her. ‘When we’re all eating each other,’ I said, ‘I’m hoping that a side dish of seaweed will vary my diet a bit.’

A dozen of us had responded to the flyer pinned to the vegetarian café noticeboard advertising Ingrid’s day of instruction. My fellow punters were all foot soldiers of the New Age and they all had that air about them of holy children treading lightly upon the earth. They couldn’t work me out at all. My pessimism about the future of Western civilisation compensated though, I hoped, for my numb-nut ‘Hammers on Tour in Cardiff 2006’ T-shirt.

As we passed down the lane Ingrid identified a flowering wild-mustard plant, a clump of wild sorrel and a bed of watercress, from which we harvested garnish for the seaweed salad. Ingrid was very strict with us about pinching off only the tops of the watercress plants ‘to ensure their blessed continuance’.

Finally, we descended via a zigzag path into a narrow secluded cove. The tide was right out. It was one of the lowest tides of the year.

We gathered a pile of driftwood, then Ingrid gave us a team talk. Our primary consideration, she said, as we harvest the seaweed with our scissors and knives, was that we avoid dishonouring the beauty and the community of the seaweed.