Sweet Molly Malone

If that wasn't bad enough, about an hour later the emmet mum and emmet dad were playing bat and ball when the emmet boy, who was called Tom and about 11, came up with a massive mussel, not just the shell but an intact mussel half the size of my fist, which obviously had something (a mussel) living in it. He showed it to his mum, then threw it to her and she whacked it with the bat! And then they both did it again, another twice. By this time it was obvious that they were trying to smash the mussel open, and then the emmet girl, who was about 8 and wasn't called anything, brought a rock and put the mussel on it, and the mum emmet, dad emmet and girl emmet watched Tom emmet smash the defenseless mussel with a big stone, like the ape that discovers tools in 2001 A Space Odessey. And then predictably enough, straight away the emmet girl went 'Yuurgh!' and lost interest, and the emmet mum poked at it for a bit before THROWING IT TO THE SEAGULLS! How many ways can one family show their total lack of understanding of beach life? That mussel must have taken at least 20 years to grow to that size, and they snuff out its life just like that. I hope it haunts them or that at least they get a bad dose of campylobacter in retribution for the wanton destruction of a harmless filter feeder.