marramgrass

One more from Dublin in September.

I’ve finally grabbed a chance to scan the rest of the pictures from our trip to Dublin in September. On the Monday evening, while my wife was studying in our hotel room, I took a walk with a camera. It must have been somewhere just before 9 o’clock, and the staff at M&S Simply Food were tidying up. This was my view in the window.

Another pic from our few days in Dublin in September.

I wished I had a real camera with me instead of just my phone, as
there is great potential here for wallpapery goodness.

It’s also a nice change to see the grafitti/guerilla marketing done so tastefully.

While my wife was studying, I was discovering that I seem to have lost what small ability I had to hold a camera steady. I had fun, though.

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.