Middlefocus

  In Kraków for a short break we had been making our way to the Oskar Schindler factory which sits alongside the Museum of Contemporary Art.  We chanced upon this painted doorway which certainly catches attention. I knew as soon as I saw it that it would pass the test for inclusion in my photo collection of Closed Openings.  No descriptive words for this one.  Just look at it.  Observe.  Anything come to mind?

Walking a beach today, we came across a group of stones balanced on top of each other. Not a natural formation and clearly someone had found the time to engage in creative effort. How much time? How much effort? No doubt it was a meditation of sorts. Picking the right stones and shells to lend structure and support. The stack looked as if it would topple over at the slightest touch but no…it resisted the incoming waves that washed and frothed around. I stepped into the foam to get a close-up picture. I thought of other times; childhood, when armed with buckets and spades we sculpted with sand. This seemed the product of maturer effort - a rock castle and moat. Later we watched as a small flock of turnstones flew down, plumage the colour of the foreshore, and got busy living up to their appellation, flicking over pebbles in search of food. Did the stack look out of place to the birds? Upset their larder? Not a bit of it, they took it in their glide. A small stone stack, kinder to the en...

  It may have been the light from a sunny day at the beach because a glint of something caught my eye and made me pay attention. Glass. I stooped to look closer and picked up a bottle. Had it been just discarded or washed up? It looked as if it had been buried, brown caked-on sand around its neck, still stoppered. I could feel the embossment on the body and dusting it down could read the details: REGISTERED. WJ. BRIGGS. BELFAST and signed WJ.Briggs. But what did it contain? Holding it up to the light I peered inside hoping to find a roll of paper - a message in a bottle maybe. No such luck, it was quite empty. No hint of or even a trace of whatever liquid it once contained. One thing was sure, it was a glass bottle, dulled by abrasion but clearly vintage. This would-be beachcomber wanted to learn as much as possible about it. Questions surfaced. Why was the bottle here? How come? What was nearby? Who left it, an adult or a child? Does the Briggs company still exist? Where was it? S...

A railway line runs close to the rear of our home. Local and express trains including the hourly ones serving the Belfast/Dublin route hurtle past every fifteen minutes and apart from the occasional sustained warning blast of an air horn we don’t pay them much attention. Visitors to our home are taken aback: “Does that noise not bother you?” It doesn’t. It is simply part of the soundscape of where we live; something we are used to. Our paternal family has close connection with the railway. Granda Christy was a driver on a steam locomotive for the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) which also operated in Northern Ireland. A story is told of him stopping his engine on the Antrim Coast as he felt that the sound coming back to him from up ahead was not quite right. His intuitive experience was correct, boulders had fallen unto the track. Catastrophe avoided. A close call. Christy TRACEY with his steam locomotive. Photo source unknown. Exterior sounds are one type of resonance and t...

  There are times when I feel that I have to clear out some of my books. It’s not that I no longer appreciate those that I have decided to re-home, it’s more about making more space to let in the new. My latest dispersal included several books not on display but stored away in cupboards. It has been years since I opened them and I decided that they needed a more conscientious custodian.  Use them or diffuse them!  is my new guiding mantra. Mind you, flicking through some that I had earmarked for donation, I found myself rereading. Interest renewed I decided to keep them. They live to light another day. I wondered how much I had invested in the books and did a quick online search to check availability and current values. Even some of my pristine hard covers were only just a few £ pounds and there were loads for sale. So having decided to send the books on their way to new owners, it would be relatively simple and cheap to buy them again if I found I was missing them. Selec...