They all start to laugh, after pulling some serious straight faces for the last 20 minutes. “Can we all tell you our own stories? Just like the rest of this talk?” – I agree, just for once, to let them.
1:
“I was fourteen and it was my birthday, I went out for a meal with my family to a tapas restaurant. I ordered calamari as we were sat at a long small table, kind of like the last supper. And it turned out that night, it was almost really the last supper for my fourteen year old me, because I almost chocked on a piece of calamari and died that night. I was in the middle of the table and my mom was at the other side and she couldn’t get to me at all. It was the most frightening night of my life.”
2:
“When I was 18, we all moved to Brighton. Obviously Brighton is a sea town and we went swimming in the first week. It was after quite a fun night out, after a few drinks, at two in the morning. We had an amazing time until we swam into a school of fish that we recognized as squid. It was amazing because we’ve never seen them so close to the shore. It was very dreamy. I still don’t know if it was the alcohol or that it really happened.”
3:
“I think the squid is a fascinating animal. Everybody knows it in a different way. For some of us they are merely food, like calamari, but for others, like fisherman hundreds of years ago, colossal squids where monsters that terrorized their ships. They were the scariest and at the same time most misunderstood animals of their time, and they still are. They have many layers and I have always had a fondness of them. Squid are not just food, they are beautiful and full of ink. Remember that please.”