Stormy Weather

 Where else but Ballintoy Harbour:

Cropped from square; 'Blad/150mm lens, FP4+ in Ilfotec HC, on Foma 133 paper.

Posing with the Bard

If I had a penny for every time someone stood by this statue for a photograph I reckon I'd be pretty wealthy.  In the middle of Stratford-upon-Avon, of course...

Shakespeare&admirers, Stratford, 2022. I wonder that the pointing girl is saying - 'Move over that way a bit', perhaps.
OM4ti with probably a 35mm Zuiko f/2.8, HP5+ on Ilford MG Classic paper.

We did Shakespeare at school, of course - and I never read another word of his afterwards.  How do they manage to do that, I wonder?  And the worst of it is, we had (I thought) an absolutely fantastic English teacher who I really liked.  In junior years we did Richard II - you know, the one where John of Gaunt says This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle... and that's about the only thing I remember about the whole thing.  Then a few years later we did...wait for it, A Midsummer Night's Dream - the one with all the fairies dancing in the forest and what have you - perfect for an all boy's school. I jest, of course - most of us hated A Midsummer Night's Dream, I just didn't understand what the heck was going on.  In fact, I didn't really get Richard II either, truth be told.  And I was an avid reader - still am.  Looking back, I think it was because it was never explained to us how to read a play - I had no idea how to get to grips with all the characters and how to extract the plot from the dialog.  So, that was my experience of "the greatest writer in the English Language".  

  

Derry Girls

Are you a fan of the show?  We watch it - well, my wife is a Derry Girl herself and I used to live and work in the city so we have to, really.  It's good and mostly we go along with it in spirit but as in so many comedies these days the language is a tad colourful, which puts us off.  A bit like that other Irish sitcom, Mrs Brown's Boys, which I can honestly say I've never watched an episode of - the first few minutes was enough for me.  I think the language thing is all too often used as a crutch for poor writing - when all else fails, throw in a few F's and sure that'll carry the scene.  Anyway, that's just my $0.02.

The big Derry Girls mural in the city is striking - you can't miss it when walking around the walls.  My niece duly posed for a shot, and through luck and perspective I managed to get her head more or less the same size as the drawn figures - all part of the plan, of course ;)

Derry Girls, plus new cast member, 2022.  HP5+ on Ilford MG Classic paper.

Buxton

 It seems like an age ago we were dropping Missy off to start her second year at Uni, but in reality it was only about 6 weeks ago.  Oxford was less than a 3 hour drive from Liverpool/Birkenhead but we had planned to take a couple of days to ourselves on the way back.  We stayed one night in Stratford and for the second night we drove up to Buxton, on the edge of the Peak District.  From there it would be relatively easy cross-country dash to Birkenhead.  I'd never been to that part of the country before so it was all new to me.  Buxton is, or was, a Spa town, of which there are a few dotted around England - Bath being perhaps the most famous.  I was looking forward to it.  

The drive North was straightforward enough with Sat-Nav, although there were a couple of times I'd have been totally flummoxed without it, having to switch lanes right and then left in quick succession.  We started out on the A3400, which you could say was the picturesque route through that part of the Cotswolds north of Oxford, by way of a succession of rather easy-on-the-eye villages.  It was vaguely familiar to me, since for a year I used to drive from my placement year in Solihull back and forth to Oxford to meet up with my brother and friends, but that was nearly 40 years ago so things had changed a bit in that time.  I never remembered any A3400, but I was certain it was the same road and then I passed a sign that read, "A3400, formerly the A34".  Ah...now it made sense!  The A34 definitely rang some bells.  It's not a road to drive if you are in a hurry, though, as each village had a strict 40mph limit - reinforced by a hellish number of fixed speed cameras dotted about.  Fair enough - we weren't in a rush.  We kept to the backroads all the way North and eventually the landscape changed from Cotswoldy-twee-ness to a more rural environment, with sheep and mile upon mile of dry-stone walls.  Eventually we hit our destination, dumped the car at the hotel and headed off to explore the Spa Town of Buxton.  

No offence to the good people of Buxton, but it was nothing like I expected.  I guess it didn't help that our hotel (Premier Inn, dependably clean and comfortable) was on the less salubrious side of town, so our walk into the centre didn't fire our senses with anticipation of what was to come.  By the time we hit the main drag it was late afternoon and most places seemed to be on the verge of closing, or had closed.  There weren't a lot of people about but there seemed to be a lot of pet shops.  A lot.  And the town looked and felt nothing like Bath, with its wonderful architecture and lively ambiance. We started to look around for places where we might eat later on.  We didn't find any.  Well, there was a fish and chip shop/restaurant but my wife took one look at it and said No, so that was that.  Behind the main square the land fell away quite steeply and we realised that was where the 'Spa' part of Buxton lay, so we girded our loins, headed downwards and tried not to think about the steep uphill walk back.

Buxton.  The fancy part.  OM4ti, HP5+ on Ilford MG Classic

Once we got down the hill the architecture looked more like the Spa town we had been expecting.  There was a Georgian crescent (pictured), impressive looking domed buildings and what seemed to be a rather beautiful park.  This is more like it, we thought.  We dropped into a hotel for a small libation in one of the nicer buildings (from the outside) and quickly dropped out again.  Inside it looked very tired and strangely quiet, so we resorted to another aimless dander about.  We poked our heads into a large pub but it was jammed packed and noisy so we didn't stop (it looked like a Wetherspoon's and therefore not the authentic Buxton experience that we were after).  The next pub we came across, which looked promising from the outside, turned out to be closed down.  We never did find anywhere to eat (we ate back at the hotel - it seemed like the safest option).  We found more pet shops, though.  

So that was our experience of Buxton and we won't be back.  Granted we only had one evening in the town and perhaps if we'd only walked a little further we'd have come across all manner of lovely restaurants, bars and bistros - but on this occasion they eluded us.  We left with the impression Buxton's best days are well and truly behind it.  

Inside Derry's Guildhall

The Guildhall in Derry~Londonderry is really something - and it has a great permanent exhibition on the Plantation of Ulster, where large swathes of land were given over to the London Guilds (Drapers, Clothworkers, Vintners, Mercers etc) on the understanding they would invest and build a brighter future for everyone.  It didn't quite work out like that, of course, but that's another story for another day (and probably somewhere else other than this place).  Anyway, I took The Brother and his daughter up to the city for a day and we did the Guildhall, the Walls and Badger's Bar & Restaurant for a spot of lunch.  I had the OM4ti with me and these handheld shots were taken with the Zuiko 24mm, on HP5+ rated at 800:

Norman & Beard Pipe Organ in the Guildhall, from 1891.  A thing of beauty it is, too. 
On Ilford MG Classic paper.

The Organ dominates one end of the Great Hall and the other end is given over to a decent amount of stained glass windows:

Stained Glass Windows of the Great Hall. 
The detail and colour of the glass is impressive - but you'll have to take my work for that. 

In other news, both my wife and I have been a bit under the weather recently, with what we assumed was a bad cold/flu.  My wife had a bad head all week whereas I was just a bit under the weather, feeling a little tired and with a bit of a cough.  We never even thought about that-other-thing, until someone suggested we do a test and sure enough, both of us tested positive.  My wife has been hit a lot harder than me but I had my last booster in May, whereas my wife's was almost a year ago, so that may well explain it.  Either way, we seem to be on the mend, albeit slowly.  As Covid began to spread, I was pretty sure we couldn't avoid getting it at some point, but the goal was always to try for that not to happen in the first wave so Mission Accomplished with regard to that.  Hopefully we'll bounce back without any lasting issues.  

S at BH

Here's my American niece, who we shall refer to as S, enjoying some good sea air at Ballintoy Harbour the other week:

'Blad/150mm Sonnar, FP4+ on Foma 133 paper.

Should that be 'whom'?  I think it should, but I'm a tad hazy on these things.

Dunluce Castle and Benbane Head

Looking East from the new viewing platform at Magheracross - the ruins of Dunluce Castle in the foreground and Benbane Head (Causeway territory) in the distance:

The view changes, not surprisingly, depending on the light and on the day we were there, the light was good.  There was a fierce wind, mind you, but that's hard to capture on film when there aren't any trees or flags around. 
Via the 'Blad/150mm Sonnar, FP4+, Ilfotec HC and Foma 133 paper.

 Apparently there was a castle here in the 13th Century but the ruins you see here date from the 16th&17th Centuries.  Dunluce served as the seat of the Earls of Antrim - either the McQuillans or the McDonnells depending on when you happened to pass by.  Eventually, when the money dried up, it was abandoned to the elements - various bits fell into the sea and stones were scavenged for other projects.  At one time, due to marriage, it was part-owned by Winston Churchill but he gave his share to the Northern Irish government in 1928.  I had a walk around it a few years ago and to be honest there isn't much to see, but it's a pleasant enough place to dander about, sit on the stones and wonder what life must have been like back in the day.  Fairly brutal, I'd imagine.