Did you know that the River Thames is tidal through London? The muddy foreshore that is revealed at low tide is home to long-lost buried treasure, medieval tiles, glass bottles, coins, clay pipes and hundreds of ceramic chips from long-broken tea sets. The searching for these fragments is called intertidal archaeology, but we have a much more romantic name for it: ‘larking’. You can ‘lark’ anywhere and I do! In my garden, on dog walks, at the beach and over the years, my family and I have collected hundreds of tiny pieces of china from broken tea sets, putting them for safe keeping in our pockets until we get them home to be washed and admired. I just love the patterns, colours and the glimpses into past lives these larked, once mundane treasures offer. What stories they could tell us!