In the second of July’s Plymouth Prompts, I want to introduce you to one of the characters we met at the National Marine Aquarium, Friday the Green Turtle.

Last week I shared a creative prompt inspired by Drake’s Island, which sits in the Plymouth Sound.

Friday shares the Atlantic Tank with an assortment of sharks, rays and other species and is doing his part to enthral visitors with his cheeky antics, which include stealing food from the immense sting rays and lemon sharks.

His name inevitably makes me think of Robinson Crusoe. In fact, Bournemouth Oceanarium, which Friday is on loan from, also had a female Green Sea Turtle called Crusoe until she died in 2016.

At Bournemouth Oceanarium, Friday made headlines in 2009 after retrieving a toddler’s dummy dropped into his tank – and sucking it just as a baby would. So it seems his cheeky behaviour is nothing new.

Plymouth Marine Aquarium has introduced an enrichment programme for Friday to keep him occupied. It’s like he’s that disruptive child in a classroom who’s just too smart for their own good (or the good of their teachers/marine biologists!).

However, his naughtiness is brilliant for the Aquarium’s PR, helping visitors to see marine animals as personality-rich individuals in need of our respect and care.

Can you turn this into a story about a marine creature’s misadventures, or a climate fiction tale about how we can positively impact our seas?

Write a tale inspired by this marine mischief-maker!

Plymouth Prompts: Island.

Plymouth Prompts: Figurehead.

Plymouth Prompts: Bums.

If you write or create something prompted by this idea, please let me know by emailing judydarley (at) iCloud.com. I’d love to know the creative direction you choose.

Look out for next week’s Plymouth Prompt.

Easily reached by rail or sea, Plymouth sits on the south coast of Devon, and is aptly described as Britain’s Ocean City. It looks out to where the English Channel broadens into the open Atlantic, and onwards to North America. On fine summer days, you could feel you’re somewhere far more tropical than south west England.

We travelled via GWR trains, taking in the most glorious scenery south and west of Bristol), with wildlife sightings including a buzzard and a heron as well as numerous other wading birds. We stayed at Jewells Guest House on Citadel Road, very close to Hoe Park and the waterfront.

To celebrate this beautiful city, I’m going to devote July’s weekly writing prompts to highlights and curiosities glimpsed here.

The first is very much a highlight, whether you have a passion for marine life, boats, islands or history.

Drake’s Island sits in the Plymouth Sound just a short distance from the mainland, and is a haven for wildlife as well as brimming with military tales and more. I’ve always loved islands – the possibility of being cut off from civilisation is hugely appealing and rife with suspenseful possibilities (as Agatha Christie understood well). The island only got its first telephone in 1987!

In 2005 anti-nuclear protestors squatted here, It’s changed names (and personalities) several times since it first appeared in recorded history in 1135 as St Michael’s, and was fortified for 400 years.

How could you use some of this in a work of fiction? Might you introduce a few military ghosts, an eerie fog-laced Armada or a fizz of climatic peril?

Plymouth Prompts: Survivor.

Plymouth Prompts: Figurehead.

Plymouth Prompts: Bums.

If you write or create something prompted by this idea, please let me know by emailing judydarley (at) iCloud.com. I’d love to know the creative direction you choose.