Fishing For A Sleeping Bag Coffin

I’m by the sea, unpacking my things; I come across some fish I stitched at infant’s school. In the same box (a cedar wood cigar box) I also fish-out bit of driftwood; a sleeping bag coffin; I found it whilst beachcombing in West Wales last summer.

The accidental combination of these strange bedfellows only goes to confirm what I already know: that there’s something fishy about women (sealed) in sleeping bags, something mermaid-like: don’t mermaids drag fishermen down to their deaths in the depths of the ocean, with their beautiful serenading?

Mermaids come in all colours of sleeping bag. Mermaids in red sleeping bags smell of happiness, but if condensation - tears - saturate the sleeping bag, their tails turn purple, and smell like sadness. Fishermen long to catch mermaids in order to sniff their red or purple sleeping bags.