A meaningful present.

I was home last weekend and did what I love best: moseying for hours on my beloved South Downs. When I did my biology A level, my class went to Stoughton and Harting to learn about the vegetation, but for me, it has always been fossils.


I went hunting for a meaningful present, and I found this flint that is sort of heart-shaped (with some stretch of the imagination) for Woy. I was actually looking for a fossil (on Kingley Vale) and found this instead.

This skeleton is a fossil, and the flint fills the spaces left by the soft parts of the animal after they rotted away. This was probably the burrow or body of some prehistoric creature.


I wondered if it was ever made into a tool. Flint was used in the manufacture of tools during the Stone Age as it splits into thin, sharp splinters called flakes or blades (depending on the shape) when struck by another hard object (such as a hammerstone made of another material).

Anyway, I gave it to him, he kissed it and buried it in the pot of his precious cheese plant. “Now Lech has a heart,” he said.