FALLING SOMEWHERE AS RAIN

An impromptu visit to Southport beach, armed only with my iPhone and a spare hour. Without suitable footwear, I was confined to the sea wall and a thin strip of dry beach, but various apps such as FIMO, Blackie and Hipstamatic gave some satisfactoty results.

Having grown up in Liverpool, I have seen the city change and evolve over the last sixty years, developing to meet the demands of modernity and change, but each new wave of improvements or extensions seems to break across an implacable bedrock which refuses to relinquish its shape to the tides. No matter how many new buildings and constructions spring up on the seven streets, the original fabric of the yawning seaport still manages to hold fast amongst the jetsam of commerce. Near one of the Northern entrances to the main city and on the grounds of the newspaper offices, is a vast sculpture, celebrating the city’s vital role in opening up the New Worlds in the eras of exploration and trade. Erected in 2006, the ‘Face of Liverpool ’ is a massive steel lozenge perforated by a circular hole holding a steel ring like the mount for a globe. The circle serves as a frame or a portal to the Mersey estuary and the docks and the surrounding dais is marked with a message in morse code. The wh...

 This post finds me returning to the confluence of poetry and photography once more as Philip Larkin's marvellous writings find a reflection in a theme I am often drawn to - Railways. The blog itself takes its name from one of Larkins' lines from the beautiful ' Whitsun Weddings ', which finds the author in a railway carriage one summers day in the 1950's. Larkin had the gift of making the most ordinary and mundane situations seem hugely important and striking and this poem highlights his way of picking out snapshots of life from the rush and bustle of the everyday - as the line says: sun destroys t he interest of what’s happening in the shade, I enjoy rail travel, even though it is much changed since Larkin's day and far less romantic. However, it is a great opportunity to grab snapshots of the journey, which might otherwise be missed as the train speeds through the city and countryside. To this end, I use my iphone and a variety of different camera apps to gra...