Random inflated lobster seen three years ago at Shipley in North Yorkshire. It was a giant of the species. I think there was a food festival on? But as Shipley is well inland I don’t think it was from a fishing fleet!
I love the two wheel cart it sits on, presumably to move it around? Would it have been in a parade of giant shellfish? I don’t know… Crabs moving sideways, Oysters opening and closing, massive pearls shining in the sun.
Bright red, ike a post box. It must represent a cooked lobster… Poor thing…
Ripples remembered on the beach at Rhyl. Memories of walking on that beach as a child. The gently sloping beach would allow you to walk in shallow water as the tide came in or went out. I remember walking over those ridges that were quite hard, my little feet could feel them, they don’t flatten as your weight goes onto them if you are a child. Rhyl beach is long and wide when the tide is out. When I was small I wandered off to paddle in the sea. But when I turned round I couldn’t see my family anywhere. It was before I found out I needed glasses and it was only a kind person who took me to the lifeguard station where they used the tannoy that helped me to get reunited. On the same holiday I think I wandered into someone else’s caravan because it looked like ours? I must have been about six as I got glasses aged seven.
In about 2006 and 2007 I painted several murals in the Arnold Bennett suite of the Leopard Hotel. It has appeared on Britain’s most Haunted on TV and until a couple of years ago was still open. Now no one seems to know what is happening with it. I’m sure it still needs a lot of work doing on it. No doubt my murals will get painted over if it is refurbished. It’s sad, because for a few years the place thrived. But there was also bad luck there. I wish things coukd be better for it. X
I remember a cyclo camping holiday in Wales with my hubby. We forgot the main tent. We got to Wales on the train and to our campsite. It was only when we unpacked the tent we realised we had left the tent airing on the washing line at home. We had to tie our groundsheet onto a young man’s tent for shelter, it was raining and not good under there despite having our sleeping bags. So we went in the camp bar and bought the lad whiskeys to say thanks for him helping us out. Then in the morning we realised we had spent all our holiday money on booze so we had to comeback the next day. We ended up in the guards van of the train with a rugby team because there were no seats. They were Very Rude! Worst holiday ever!
Hot day, blue sky, barely a cloud in the sky, cattle in a field, reflections in the canal. Memories are made of this, blues and greens, shade and light.
I have memories of days like this, maybe not as hot, but they were calm and happy. I remember a time when things were not scary. Oh there were diseases around, and awful things were happening. But I was a child. I didn’t know about them.
Then I remembered the disaster at Aberfan. There was a land slip of old mining waste. It slid down a hill and landed on a school. Children and adults died. That was the first TV report I remember seeing.
Now rivers rise and places flood all the time, “hundred year events” happen every ten or twenty years. Storms dump three months water on a country while other places suffer heat domes and wild fires.
Will the wonderful days of summer be once in 100 days instead? Maybe we need to sort it out NOW!
I wrote this a few days ago but for some reason it did not publish? Now on a grey, dismal day I look back after another walk and Im sad it wasnt like this, but glad it was a lot cooler!
I decided to reduce the size of my photos (optimise them). I have an anti virus software that does this for me. So I pressed the button and 1852 (or so) photos later the size reduced and I deleted the big files.
But now after clearing all the empty files I have found that they’re all saved under the same date! 18.10.18.
Me a couple of years ago painting banners for our mystery play we did. These are pictures of the willow pattern from Spode that I was copying for the performance. We hold it on a Saturday towards the start of July. Unfortunately we could not hold it last year and only had an online event this year. I hope it’s reinstated when things get better.
I’m so busy with college work it would have been difficult to make the time but I love doing this. It makes me feel part of a community. I also miss all the friends I have through being part of it. X
Sunshine, a stick of rock, sandy beach, bucket and spade to make sandcastles. The cool feeling of wet sand as you wiggle your toes in it…or the hard ridges of sand rippled by shallow water. Memories of collected shells, long thin razor shells, cockle shells, mussels, spirals and smooth. So many types.
All these memories were made on various holidays and day trips to beaches, looking out over the sea, walking through seaweed that littered beaches, sand flies and sand hoppers.
Remembering catching various trains, some of them were steam trains. Watching the countryside fly by, a river running on one side of the train, then the other. The train running past the caravan site we stayed at.
Sunshine, rain, home made cooking in the caravan on a tiny stove. Sleeping on a bed made of boards and cushions where the table had stood. Gas mantles that hissed when mom lit the lights at night.
The tiny crab that escaped from my plastic bucket and spade and hid in my shoe… And it’s pincers snapping on my little toe!
Memories and the wish to make more. Missing the seaside.
Mallaband-Brown 