“Jon!”

 He shouts at the top of his lungs

 I scurry

Awkwardly

Through soggy sand

Tripping over sea-softened

Splitting wooden posts

In my eagerness to see what’s happened

“What is it Dad?”

“What’s happened?!”

I stop.

Puffing and panting

Squinting

Against the sun

I see him

Sat on the sand

Looking flabbergasted

Pointing away 

Towards the sea

“I’ve seen him!”

“I’ve seen him!”

 He shouts

An actor so accomplished

He could easily give Laurence Olivier a run for his money

“Seen who?...who Dad?!”

I shout back excitedly

“I’ve seen ‘t’ sea dog!”

Is the response I get

From him

Only now he’s on the verge of tears

And raises his hand like a petrified villager from a horror b -movie

Who’s witnessed a monstrous beast first hand

“He came out of ‘t’ bloody sea,walked up to me and ran back into it!!”

“Can tha see him?...he’s over there!”

I follow the trail of his index finger

And can barely make out a stick-like dog

(probably a jack russell)

A mere pin-prick

Stood at the edge of the vast sea

“I told thi he were real!”

“But tha wouldn’t believe me!”

He sobs now

Wiping his eyes

Still milking it for all it’s worth

 

I’m ten years old

And know better

But I decide to play by his rules

Sitting dumbfounded by his side

Shaking my head in mock wonder

 

(My childhood holidays are full of incidences like this,
Dad’s other favourite piece being the burying of scraps of change
when my back’s turned;
then pretending to come across lost treasure
and getting me to dig for it like a simpleton)