Tag Archives: health and safety

Come now fisherman!

Dangerous beach toy

For those of you who had a guess on Would you let your child play with this? – here is the correct answer and full image.

Whilst on holiday, we were out walking along the sand dunes and came upon a whole lot of gorgeous shells…then some fishing line…and narrowly missed standing on an extemely sharp, new knife (not the one in the image). It was a chilling experience and seconds before I found it, the kids had walked within millimetres of it and I dread to think how the outcome would have been had they stood or fallen on it. I  found a safe spot to dispose of the said knife.

The next day, once we were over that incident and had shown the kids to keep an eye out, we were back on the beach and I was putting the beach towels up when our 4 year old piped up ‘Look what I found! Another one!’ A bit confused as to what he was trying to tell me – he brought his little hand up and in it was the knife above.

This time – there was the initial chill that went through my body after the shock of making sure he hadn’t cut himself and then confusion and then pure anger! The questions racing through my mind :

  • How on earth did he get his hands on it?
  • How had I missed it?
  • How can fishermen be so careless and selfish? (with silent swear words in amongst those I spose I should add)
  • How many more knives?

And plenty more. He answered very casually  that it was right next to my foot where I had stepped back to start setting the towels up. No he hadn’t touched it the sharp side.

As you can see – it must have washed up on the overnight tide as it is pretty rusty. I also think it was probably a good thing that we had shown them the one from the previous day and thankful that we hadn’t stood on it whilst jumping in the waves where we would never have seen it.