Humanity has always struggled with scale. When confronted with seventy million years of compressed Cretaceous chalk plunging majestically into an endless grey sea, the British instinct is not to write an epic poem or build a temple to the ancient gods.
The British instinct is to erect a small wooden shed painted in lime green racing stripes and lock a deckchair inside it with a rusty brass padlock.
This image documents a quiet, geological stand-off.
In the background sits Culver Cliff, a colossal monument of tectonic upheaval, patiently enduring the slow erosion of the Atlantic. In the foreground sits an architectural cube roughly the size of an upright freezer, daring the tide to do its worst.
Perched on the roof is a seagull. It is not contemplating the vastness of the English Channel, nor the subtle curvature of the Earth. It is calculating, with terrifying precision, the flight trajectory required to intercept a dropped salt-and-vinegar crisp from a tourist three-quarters of a mile away.
Everything here is locked down, battened down, and slightly damp. The sea will eventually claim the entire coastline, of course, but until that happens, someone has made absolutely sure that nobody else is getting their hands on that slightly mildewed windbreak.