Tugnet by the Sea - by Duncan Harley

Dang. Read sign before engaging brain.

 It says something like 'please do not climb on me'. I, of course took this literally and wondered why anyone in their right mind would put that on a sign.
Surely it would make more sense to simply not put the warning out in the first place. I mean, why tempt folk to break the rules.

 It was only after Janice had come back from the loo that I finally got it.

The message, she pointed out, had nothing whatsoever to do with the sign at all and had much more to do with the blue and yellow plastic dolphin. A broken wing, if dolphins have such appendages, told the partial story. Bound to the dolphin's flank by rolls of brown fibreglass tape, the Tugnet dolphin shows signs of desperate life-saving surgery following the unwanted attentions of some five year old intent on high-sea bow-riding..

Not for them the attentions of a cash-strapped NHS physician. The plastic dolphins of the Moray Firth are dependant, in their hour of finest need at least, on parcel-tape and - dare I say it - gorilla glue.

 As for the climbing up on signs, I suspect that the dolphins have a slant on it.

Location: Spey Bay, Fochabers IV32 7PJ, UK

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