Blog Archives
‘Waiting for a Train’
Today’s blog title track can be found here; it’s an old one by Flash and the Pan.
The dog looked like he was waiting for the commuter train from London yesterday evening, so he could race it, probably all the way to the end of the line.
He didn’t get lucky on this occasion.
Southend’s Bottoms
I am obsessed.
With the bottoms of boats (if there is a technical term for them I shall be enlightened I’m sure…).
One of them (down below) reminded me of Van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Rhone.
Others reminded me of nothing more than themselves.
People can be like the bottoms of boats ~ layers upon layers are revealed if they are weathered hard enough.
A stolen hour
The tide goes so far out in Southend-on-Sea that it is a rare day that you can walk along the water’s edge. Even more unlikely is the sound of the surf slapping onto the sand, like you really were on a bona fide beach, not merely the estuarine edgelands of the Old Man River Thames.
Today there were both those things; the double whammy transported me.
Before the fog
I am not one for tinkering with photos much. I do like how the different textures of sky, sea and stones come through in the grey in this though.
More Foreshore
The Crowstone marks the end of the Port of London’s Authority on the Thames.
I am not sure if it’s a free for all past this point – it certainly seems that way by the time you get to the pleasure beaches…
The Crowstone's East Face
East Face Inscription
A break in the clouds
The dogs on the beach ban lifts for 6 months in October, so Rudi and went down the other day and pretty much had the place to ourselves, apart from a few cockle pickers further out on the mud.
I wanted to take the camera down there but the battery was flat and I couldn’t find the charger so I had to make do with the Blackberry. How it would have all turned out with a proper camera I will never know. Life can just be like that sometimes.
The Crowstone with dog on the foreshore
Remains of the Day (the flipside for Emily)
It’s been ID ed: A clearnose skate.
Well done forensic fish psychologist Emily.
But, now you have to finger the perp!
Waiting for Mud
Last weekend was the Mud Run. We went down to watch a friend in a Ukelele band who were planning on entertaining the crowds (in the mud naturally), but the tide was doing its own thing that morning and staying in and in and in…
In the absence of mud, the Ukes played anyway like seaside troubadours and the eldest, who loves a good fossick, unearthed this beast. Strictly speaking it’s only half a beast, note the fearsome spine. We were going to pop down to the Sealife Centre for ID purposes, but then we decided to have an ice-cream instead.
High points of the morning: watching the Foreshore Guard trying to keep the beach clear around a ringed plover’s nest (entirely undistinguishable from the stones even when clearly pointed out) & the Ukes who played “Feeling Groovy”.
Low points: lack of mud, omnipresent car parking wardens hanging about like vultures, and being told off by the Foreshore Guard for having Rudi’s evil dog paws on a lead on the beach (in contravention of byelaw number 3 zillion and twelve).
Foreshore Guards earn their dough, you know. It’s not all sitting in a hut watching the world promenade by…
A monster of the deep
Feeling Groovy
Turquoise & Rust
Feeling even groovier
The Transgressor eyes up the amusements
