A Line In The Sand

In 2005, two childhood friends from Delft in the Netherlands met up in Shingle Street on the Suffolk coast to support and comfort each other while they both underwent treatment for breast cancer.  After a long walk and chat, Lida Kindersley, a letter cutter in Cambridge, and Els Bottema, a ceramist in Zutphen, began building a line of shells on the beach as ‘a symbol of friendship’.  Fast forward 13 years and happily the two friends are both cancer free.  As for the line they started all those years ago, it is still going strong and what’s more it has become something of a local landmark.    At that first meeting, the pair vowed to return to the beach every six months to repair the line, which to them had become an important part of their therapy and recovery.  But when the two 64 year olds returned not only did they find the line very much intact but that it had grown as other people added to it. The rest as they say is history.  At the last count, the line comprised 20,000 individual whelk shells and stretched over a distance of 275 metres.  Now a book and a short film have been put together to record the line and what it came to symbolise to the two women as they each battled cancer. Mrs Kindersley, a mother of three, explains, “When we received our cancer diagnoses and the prognosis was not good, I said to Els, ‘If we survive this, we will go together to Shingle Street as it is a healing place’.  It is a symbol of friendship and togetherness, a collaboration we wanted to record before it eventually disperses.”  But if local residents, including a Mr Tim Miller, have anything to do with it, it could be a long time before the line disappears.  As Mr Miller said, “Despite fierce weather conditions with strong winds, the line remains clear and powerful and visible throughout the year.  The line for me is a signal of courage and survival.”  Sounds like this is one line that is set to run and run.