Ace Jet 170

#theoldmenoforangefield

 

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For the past five years, during term time, I have found myself walking our dog around Orangefield Park, near to the Grammar school our boys go to. My oldest son – the one that's an actual giant – plays rugby and Saturday morning is more often than not match day. Just like it is throughout the western world no doubt.

I drop him off for pre-match training, give the dog a walk, then take my position pitch-side to shout a bit. It's great and although I don't have a long history of sportsfaning, 'The Rugby' has become a top-notch source of pleasure…and pain, of course. Such is the plight of the sportsfan.

Orangefield Park fills a gap between the school, a densely residential area, a key arterial road and a dodgy estate. Like many parks, it's a meeting place where people meet people they would never normally meet.

My favourite people are the old dudes. The grumpy, friendly, silent, chatty dog-treat packing, dog-walking, old dudes. 

I've watched, from the bushes, the ebb and flow of the old dudes. Sometimes walking solo, sometimes in pairs…occasionally in packs. I do engage with them – usually as our dogs are drawn to each other's odours – not least because I know that one day, I will be one of them.

I've been taking sneaky snaps of them whenever a back or gaze is turned. If you're on IG, you can follow the hashtag above to keep tabs on the park's most worthy patrons.

There and brack again

Spring. And with it returns more opportunities to scratch around the shoreline for discarded bivalve mollusc casings; washed up from their brackish habitats for macroscopic scrutiny.

The Weed

We were up on the north coast on Sunday, visiting Karen's friend Abigail. She has a place in Cushendall. The beach on Cushendall gets lots of sea debris and with a good few days of amazing weather, the detritus was all dried out. Ready for picking.

To the unfamiliar, most of the flotsam and jetsam looks like the dried stems of bulbous flowers. But of course those heads are seaweed roots, their dehydrated tendrils twisted into alien, slightly creepy, shapes.

There's more to freak you out on Flickr.

Beachy

Hands up who doesn't love a beach?

Thought so. Everyone loves a beach. Even in inclement weather there's much to entertain you on a beach. Karen is facinated by rock pools and we can spend hours poking around for trapped sea life: hermit crabs, shrimps, the occassional blood sucker, a sea snail here and there. Unidentifiable fish. Once, on the north coast of Ireland, we cornered an enormous jelly fish in a particularly deep and still pool, to study from a safe distance, until we set it free (being careful to avoid contact of course).

I like to comb. For small, pilferable natural phenomena.

The Ropes

I feel like I've already shown these but I can't see them anywhere in Ace Jet now so perhaps I'm wrong.

Ropes. And floats.

I was digging through a load of photos to find some to use on a small advertising project. I do have a tendency to take photos with a graphic design application in mind. Not a real, specific one, but I'll compose a shot with space in it, instinctively imagining it being used on a book or brochure cover or something. It's just a habit. I do it without thinking too much. And every now and then, the photos come in useful.

So, let's hope that in the future, someone asks me to design something to do with sea fishing or ropes or harbours so I can use this lot.

Stick. On Rock.

Fungus Meets Photosynthetic Partner

May. And with it comes the urge to be out. By the sea. On rocks. Photographing lichen.

The Fallen (2012)

Towards the end of the growing season last year we experienced a minor mini rodent problem in our greenhouse. Just a few mice. With humane traps bated with peanut butter (crunchy) and fragments of chocolate coins, one by one, the culprits were caught, jarred and re-homed in the estate that houses the Northern Ireland Assembly. 

Despite warnings to the contrary I soon had the little blighters under control and after a few weeks our unwelcome lodgers were all relocated. I'm happy to report there has been no sign of any more. Not that Karen quite believes that they've all gone. Which is the reason why she/we neglected to clear the greenhouse last year. Instead, we left much to rot and decay over the winter months.

Consequently, earlier today, I was presented with my new assignment: Clear all the shit out and make doubly sure there is nothing still living inside. Perhaps some would recoil from a task like that but not me. In fact, I jumped at the chance. Weird though it may sound to some, I find decay as beautiful as it is gross; especially when isolated and photographed against an unnnatural surface, like the galvanised steel shelves.

A little while later and it was job done, greenhouse cleared. And I can report that, without any shadow of a doubt, there is definitely nothing living inside. If you're interested, there more dead stuff here.

Northern Rock

We got a week on the North Coast just before the kids went back to school. It was epic. Somehow, even though we've been in NI for seven years, we haven't really spent any time up there. It's probably the most impressive part of the province. So we did all the obvious but dead exciting things: The Causeway, the Rope Bridge, White Park Bay was amazing. Nick from The Apprentice interupted our picnic at Ballintoy Harbour and we spotted basking sharks from the ferry to Rathlin.

And, predictably, I looked at rocks.

Favourite Pebble Style

We've all got one haven't we? For some, it might be the Red Nankin or White Cochin. Others might prefer the classic grey base and white lined Clonmore - the graphic designer's favourite. Then there's the Merkle, Norwegian Mulefoot and the Black. You might lean towards shape rather than colour and tone: The Kidney, the one the Germans call the Ungekochtes Brot or (the schoolboy's choice) the Flat Cap (perfect skim-fodder but if it's the one for you I guess you're not going to lob it back into the briny willy-nilly).

This is mine. The Simmental.