This week Paula’s asks us to show her a black & white photo and the colour original from which is has been converted. This is another ‘over the garden fence and across the field’ shot – sundowner foxgloves and corn cockle seed heads.
#black&whiteSunday
Some of you will have already read the essay below. It won first prize in a Quartos Magazine competition years ago. The magazine is no more, but I’m posting the piece again for those of you in need of a long, soothing wallow beside an African beach. Enjoy!
Going to the Dogs on Mombasa’s Southern Shore
It’s a dog’s life on Tiwi Beach, the white strand where ocean roars on coral and trade winds waft the coconut palms; and where, best of all, as far as the local canines are concerned, there are quiet coves sparse in holidaymakers. It means they may do as they please. After all, it is their own resort, and every morning they set off there from the beach villages along the headland, nose up, ears blown back in the breeze, ready for the day’s adventures.
But the dogs are not churlish. They can take or leave the odd pale human wrestling to right his windsurfer on the still lagoon; ignore the sentinel heron that marks the reef edge beyond; pay no heed to the etched black figures of the Digo fishermen who search the shallows for prawns, parrot fish, or perhaps a mottled lobster or two.
But in this last respect at least, the dogs are smug. For the fishermen come down to the beach only to make a living. And when they are done hunting, they must toil along the headland from beach village to beach village, then haggle over the price of their catch with the rich wazungu who come there to lotus eat. Hard work in the dogs’ opinion.
The dogs know better of course; know it in every hair and pore. And each morning after breakfast, when they take the sandy track down to the beach, they begin with a toss of the head, a sniff of the salt air, a gentle ruffling of the ear feathers in soft finger breezes. Only then do they begin the day’s immersion, the sybaritic sea savouring: first the leather pads, sandpaper dry from pounding coral beaches, then the hot underbelly. Bliss. The water is warm. Still. Azure. And there can be nothing better in the world than to wade here, hour on hour, alongside a like‑minded fellow.
There’s not much to it; sometimes a gentle prancing. But more likely the long absorbing watch, nose just above the water, ears pricked, gaze fixed on the dazzling glass. And if you should come by and ask what they think they’re at, they will scan you blankly, the earlier joy drained away like swell off a pitching dhow. And, after a moment’s condescending consideration, they will return again to the sea search, every fibre assuming once more that sense of delighted expectation which you so crassly interrupted. You are dismissed.
For what else should they be doing but dog dreaming, ocean gazing, coursing the ripples of sunlight across the lagoon and more than these, glimpsing the electric blue of a darting minnow? And do they try to catch it? Of course they don’t. And when the day’s watch is done, there is the happy retreat to shore ‑ the roll roll roll in hot sand, working the grains into every hair root.
And if as a stranger you think these beach dogs a disreputable looking crew, the undesirable issue of lax couplings between colonial thoroughbreds gone native: dobermanns and rough‑haired pointers, vizslas and ridge‑backs, labradors and terriers, then think again. For just because they have no time for idle chit-chat, this doesn’t make them bad fellows: it’s merely that when they are on the beach, they’re on their own time. But later, after sunset, well that’s a different matter. Then they have responsibilities: they become guardians of the your designer swimwear, keepers of your M & S beach towel, enticing items that you have carelessly left out on your cottage veranda.
By night they patrol the ill‑lit byways of your beach village, dogging the heels of a human guard who has his bow and arrow always at the ready. And when in the black hours the banshee cry of a bush baby all but stops your heart, you may be forgiven for supposing that this bristling team has got its man, impaled a hapless thief to the compound baobab. It is an unnerving thought. You keep your head down. Try to go with the flow, as all good travellers should.
But with the day the disturbing image fades. There is no bloody corpse to sully paradise, only the bulbuls calling from a flame tree, the heady scent of frangipani, delicious with its sifting of brine. You cannot help yourself now. It’s time to take a leaf out of the dogs’ book, go for a day of all‑embracing sensation ‑ cast off in an azure pool.
And in the late afternoon when the sun slips red behind the tall palms and the tide comes boiling up the beach, the dogs take to the gathering shade of the hinterland and lie about in companionable couples. Now and then they cast a benign eye on you humankind, for at last you are utterly abandoned, surrendering with whoops and yells to the sun‑baked spume. They seem to register the smallest flicker of approval: you seem to be getting the hang of things.
copyright 2016 Tish Farrell
This photo was taken from the field path in Townsend Meadow behind our house, a scene captured one day last winter when I was late home from the allotment. I often stop at this point on the path to take photos. The ash tree silhouette always catches my eye, whatever the season, and I love the way the day seems to slip behind the hill as night shuts down on top and shadows creep up to meet it. It’s a bit like a stage set. Or it could be Rip Van Winkle Land.
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Be inspired by things of the night over at Paula’s Thursday’s Special: Nocturnal
Here’s another portrait from our Victorian day out on the Talyllyn Railway in June. Looking at their website this morning I see they’ve got a very special trip coming up next month – The Halloween Steam and Scream. Oh what a hoot. I think I want to go. It’s my birthday too. There will be a choice of two Steam and Scream trains departing from Tywyn station at 5.15 and 7.15 on several October nights including the 31st. Everyone can dress up as ghouls, goblins and witches; there are prizes for the best carved pumpkin lantern, and you can book a feast at the railway cafe.
Join us for a fun spooky evening train ride along the Talyllyn Railway to the haunted woods at Dolgoch, says the blurb. Those woods are pretty spooky in broad daylight, but on a dark autumn night in the Welsh hills…Watch out for the Hessian Horseman and his Celtic brother. Yikes! And double yikes!
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Now please visit Paula at Lost in Translation for more B & W Sunday portraits.
@TalyllynRailway
#RheilforddTalyllynRailway
And it’s a wise eye. A knowing eye. And it’s a privilege to have been allowed to sit and watch a great herd move by us and around us. So quietly. Measured footfalls. Moving across the Mara thornland. Infants. Adolescents. Mothers. Aunties. The big bulls. All moving as one. To their own rhythm.
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Thursday’s Special: Eye contact
I suppose we English take the presence of electricity pylons for granted. They march across our countryside enabling us to make toast and boil the kettle, watch TV and keep the packs of supermarket frozen peas frozen, to heat our homes and charge the appliances we think we can’t live without – cell phones, tablets, laptops, cameras.
It makes me wonder though – how much power we actually need, and just when we might get around to deploying clean, renewable energy sources. Next stop fracking.
These particular pylons dominate the fields around Benthall Hall above the Severn Gorge, and until last year transmitted energy generated at the now decommissioned Ironbridge Power Station. I’m not sure how our lights stay on these days, or who to ask about it – which to me suggests a worrying situation.
We regard the provision of electricity as our natural right, while at the same time rarely considering how little personal power we have in how it is produced and delivered. We probably don’t know who owns it – this absolutely essential resource. The same applies to that other absolute necessity – the clean water that pours from our taps. So I’m also wondering if we haven’t surrendered too much power – blithely assuming that the corporate owners (whoever and wherever in the world they are) will always act in our best interest and give us what we need?
This week at Black & White Sunday Paula asks us to show her ‘towering’.
The wheat field behind the house has been harvested leaving us with a yellow stubble carpet to look at. At least for now. Doubtless it will soon be ploughed and re-sown. This morning I watched the early morning sun spread down the hill. Liquid amber. The garden was still in deep shadow, but even so, the rudbeckia were not to be outdone, making their own sunshine.
For some reason we mostly go to the seaside at Christmas, and not at all in high summer. Of course a beach can be a dramatic place any time of the year – changing and unchanging all at once, figuratively and physically. How we treat with it reflects our current mood or emotion – heightening or lowering it, depending on our inclinations.
This photo was taken on Ynys Mon, the island of Anglesey in North Wales. It was Boxing Day. The wind was perishing yet spirit-filling too, but then I always find ‘going to the beach’ exciting, in much the same way as I did when I was four. You just never know what you will find there in the margins between land and sea.
So here we have a tumble of razor shells embedded in a beach stream that was running off the marshy hinterland. I think there’s a viscid quality about the stream in the winter’s light, as if the shells have fixed there by the water rather than by the shift of sand. I like the slashes of greyish-white across medley of ochre shades. An intriguing state of disorder, then: the beach endlessly creating its own artwork.
Who wouldn’t be tempted by such a perfect apple? I came upon it yesterday as I was leaving the allotment. It’s growing on an very old and lovely tree that every year puts on its own magnificent Garden of Eden of show. We allotmenteers share the apples. They are crisp, juicy, sharp and sweet all at once. I don’t know the variety.
It’s important to keep tabs on the crop though. The window of opportunity for gobbling is brief since the apples don’t keep very well. I’m already thinking that they might be good in Tarte Tatin that most delicious of French classic deserts. I usually use Coxes Pippins later in the year, but since this August feels so autumnal, it’s an excellent excuse to make it sooner. I have a deep cast iron frying pan, which works a treat, both for the initial caramelizing of the apples on top of the cooker, and the final cooking with added the pastry lid inside the oven.
I should also say these apples have the most delicious fragrance too – lemon crisp. They anyway sum up August for me: the garden’s rich harvest.
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Changing Seasons: August Every month around the 20th Cardinal Guzman posts a Changing Seasons challenge. There are two variations to choose from, so follow the link for further instructions. They are easy-peasy.
The Talyllyn Railway in mid Wales is the oldest preserved steam railway in Britain. Over the past half century it has inspired many other such ventures and there are now some 500 miles of restored lines across the country.
That they are there at all and can offer us steamingly enjoyable train rides is mostly down to armies of enthusiastic volunteers like these chaps in the photo. It’s an enterprise fraught with responsibilities too; the health and safety implications are momentous: track, rolling stock and passengers all to be kept in good order.
And in case you missed it back in June, you can read more about Tish and Graham’s big train day out at:
Partners in steam on the Talyllyn Railway – Woo-hooooo
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This week at Black & White Sunday Paula’s challenge is COMPOSITION. Please visit to see her own very fine composition, and the other entries it inspired.
My own photo was composed in Dynamic Monochrome.
