There are always Aunties in the Mermaid Coves. The same Aunties. And on solstice mornings, with landwalker-entrancing song and candy darters, they would send me out to play and I would glide through the swaying kelp searching for news of the Seven Seas, and always find a barnacle-crusted whale by the deep trench or perhaps a clownfish with its colors dimmed by the colder water.

Merfolk and sea-creatures would be swooping and diving, riding the current with bubble-blown sighs and salt-scrubbed faces, all shimmering pale, their flicking fins and glinting scales catching the reflection of the sun against the careless tides.

Fronds of seaweed and clusters of anemones were draped over the branching coral in all the grottos; there were jugs of briny nectar, and succulent shellfish, and too many varieties of plankton and cheesefish and shellcrackers. Crabs in their crusty coats skittered near the phosphorescent rocks and the bioluminescence lit the caverns, making them ready for tales and shanties galore.

Some few large mermen sat on carved couches without their ceremonial sashes, Uncles all of them, trying their new conch pipes – holding them at arm’s length then returning them to their lips, blowing mournful tones like muted foghorns then holding them out again as though waiting for a whalesong reply.

And those loving Aunties, not needed to tend the cauldrons of fish stew (or for anything else, really) perch on the edges of their limestone chairs, poised but fierce, ready to crack shell and splash tail, but also on guard for the impending arrival of Sandy Klaws.

With apologies to Dylan Thomas.