"The old Sperm Whale Physeter macrocephlus vertebrae in my garden have quite vanished among the ferns, and moss is creeping up the skull of the Cuvier's Beaked Whale Ziphius cavirostris, long prized as a sculpture to match anyone's Barbara Hepworth. There hasn't been a decent whale corpse on the beach in years – not since the wonderful True's Beaked Whale Mesoplodon mirus of a couple of decades ago, every last scrap of which, dismantled and reassembled, now hangs aloft in the Ulster Museum in Belfast."