skerrow

1 · What I want to see here

Skerrow is five roofs and a beach. The road comes down out of the grass from the north and simply stops where the sand starts, because past that point everybody walks where they like. The houses stand in a ragged line along the top of the beach with their doors toward the water, and the gap in the middle of the line is where the road arrives. The sea takes up the whole south edge and comes further in at the middle than at the two ends, so the hamlet sits round the back of a shallow bay. Four boats ride in it just off the sand, each with a post to tie to. Between the doors and the tide line is the working ground: tubs of the morning's fish, barrels, heaps under tarpaulin, a clay smoke-oven at the west end and the well everybody shares in the middle. Nothing grows on the sand. The trees stop where the grass does.

2 · How to show it

• Lives off the water: boats ON the sea rather than near it, and tubs of fish between the boats and the doors. The catch is the one prop that says fishing and not seaside.
• Sand, not a village green: the houses stand on the beach itself and there is no path between them. The road stopping dead at the edge of the sand is what tells you the beach is the street.
• Everything faces the sea: every door is on the south side and the whole south edge is water, so the hamlet has one front and no back.
• Small: five buildings and nothing behind them but trees.

3 · What it needs

• sea along one whole edge, with a bank of sand rather than grass
• boats, afloat
• mooring posts, one a boat
• tubs of fish
• lived-in houses in a line (orange-roofed and plain, not the ruins)
• a smoke-oven: the clay kiln
• a well
• barrels
• tarpaulined heaps
• boulders on the beach
• trees behind, on the grass only
• Not in the pack: Nets, and racks to dry them on. The single most recognisable thing in a fishing village and the pack has neither; the fish tubs carry "fishing" alone.
• Not in the pack: A jetty. The water sheet has plank flooring for one but it is a floor, not an object, and laying planks over water needs a third ground layer the renderer does not have. The boats tie to posts instead.
• Not in the pack: A boat drawn up on the sand. The only boat is drawn with foam under its hull, so it can only be afloat.
• Not in the pack: A coast with a headland on it. The shore bends now (inside corners, 2026-10-09): a bay, three steps down at each end. It is the same three steps at both ends, and there are no rocks off either point, no wrack line and no wet sand.
• Not in the pack: Gulls, people, smoke from the oven.

4 · The arrangement

A single row facing the water. Three bands, north to south: grass with the road and the trees; sand with the houses along its top and the working ground below them; sea. The road enters through the one gap in the row of houses. Things thin out toward the tide line: buildings, then goods, then bare sand, then boats.

5 · What that means in (x, y)

40 x 30 squares. Grass is rows 0-9, sand from row 8, sea to row 29. The tide line is row 23 across the middle, cols 10-29, and steps a row further out three times toward each side - row 24, then 25, then 26 at the map edge - in runs of three or four squares, so the bay is twenty squares across its back and forty across its mouth. The top of the sand steps a row up and down so it is not a ruled line, in runs of six squares or more because each step costs an inside corner the renderer draws without its rim. The road is three squares wide at cols 18-21 and ends at row 9. Houses have their bottom row - the row with the door - on rows 12 to 14, staggered by a row from one to the next so the line is ragged, with cols 17-22 left open in front of the road. The smoke-oven is the first thing in the row, cols 0-2 on row 12: it was drawn between two houses first, which is the middle of the west half and not the west end. Rows 19 to 22 are kept as open sand, two boulders aside, between the lowest goods and the water, because a beach that is full to the tide line is a yard. The boats sit on rows 24, 25 and 27, three of them inside the bay and one off the east point, and never on the first row of water in their column: that row is the bank, and a boat written there would be half on sand.

7 · What it looks like

Read this against the paragraph at the top. That comparison is the only check that catches a map which is perfectly valid and is of nowhere.

6 · What was actually written

The same two grids as flat colour — earth, grass, and a block for every footprint. Anything in the render that is not here, the translation invented.

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..........NNNN................tt........
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.......tt......tt.....tt...........YYYY.
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....NNNN....YYYY.......YYYY..........kk.
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....OOOO....................LLLL........
....OOOO...............OOOO.LLLL........
KKK.OOOO.LLLL..........OOOO.LLLL..OOOO..
.........LLLL..........OOOO.......OOOO..
...f.f...LLLL................bf...OOOO..
................b..WW...f...............
.........b.b..............f......b......
.............cc.............cc.....cc...
.......f.....cc......f.b....cc.....cc...
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...........BB.p.........BB.p............
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