marramgrass

Copenhagen, March 2005.

I’m still sorting through old photographs, trying to develop some sort of organisation. This one is from our last foreign holiday before we went to Santorini last month.

I don’t think I’ve posted it here before, but I could be wrong.

I’m maybe half-way through the task of sorting and organising the almost 60 gigabytes of photos stored on our slowly-dying Windows desktop. This is from September 2004, of now-defunct Third From The Left playing the Bongo Club in Edinburgh.

Waterfront Hall, Belfast, July 2008.

Belfast, July 2008.

It seems that one of the marks of a modern European city is public art. I’ve seen some that is strange (the five-foot square matrix of 4-inch umbrellas in Athens airport, say), but the first time I came off the ferry in Belfast and saw the Beacon of Hope (as I’m told this is called) lit up I thought it was simply tremendous.

I suppose, like most art, she will connect with everyone slightly differently, but I did find something eminently hopeful about this structure standing over the Lagan.

The sign by the base reads:

This female figure represents various allegorical themes associated with hope and aspiration, peace and reconciliation and is derived from images from Classical and Celtic mythology.

This symbol creates a tangible first statement of our long term objective in bringing people together to foster a happy and fulfilling life for all and a sense of gratefulness for all that life has given us.

Symbols can carry great power — as everyone in Northern Ireland witnesses from time to time — I like to hope this one does, too.

Near Kamari, Santorini, June 2008.

The last photo from our trip, and by far my favourite.

Megalochori, Santorini, June 2008.

Oia, Santorini, June 2008.

This is the view that has become the clichéd representation of Santorini in guidebooks, paintings and on postcards sent all over the world. Of course I had to shoot it for myself. It felt very strange to be standing looking through the lenses of all those other photographers, almost all of whom did better with the scene than I managed.

Oia, Santorini, June 2008.

Oia, Santorini, June 2008.

A few weeks later and the Irish Water Spaniel pups are getting bigger. Their eyes are open, they’re very mobile, and discernable individual personalities are starting to develop. Of course, given that there are six of them together with bladders proportional to their still-small body size, there is often a bit of a whiff — you can’t bath them too often because their skin and coats aren’t up to it.

But from a distance, especially by photo, very endearing.