Quite by chance, as I clicked the exposure, a bird flew out of tree and the shot automagically composed itself! It looks like something from the Jurassic, a flying dinosaur with four wings.
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every two days or so.
Click to enlarge
For the next few photos, I’m going to leave the series on our Irish holiday, and the series on Cirencester, and instead just focus on images I love (pun only slightly intended).
Let’s start with this photo of a sunset seen from my study window. Quite by chance, as I clicked the exposure, a bird flew out of a tree and then shot automagically composed itself! It looks like something from the Cretaceous, a flying dinosaur with four wings, or a raptor that’s just snatched some unlucky feathered prey. Anyone have other opinions on ID?
The intended subject was the sunset, it was very spectacular and deserved to be recorded. The clouds were luminous, truly breath-taking and the photo fails to do them justice. In my experience that’s often the case with sunsets, the contrasts are too wide so details are lost both in the brightest and darkest areas; to show those details you have to compromise on the contrast – you really do need both. The Earth’s atmosphere scatters short wavelength blue light and that’s why the sky appears blue and is darker at higher altitudes (most of the air is below). While at sunset or sunrise the light takes a long, grazing path to your eyes and the blue scattering along that path leaves mostly oranges and reds.
Favourites
For convenience, here’s a list of my favourite images:
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I walked out to the harbour and enjoyed the sounds and smells of the sea as well as a glorious sunset. Looking south from the harbour there are some great views of the town.
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.
I’m posting an image every two days (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.
Click to enlarge
Returning to Portrush at the end of the day we ate a good meal in the holiday house, with a view over the harbour and the west beach.
Later in the evening I walked out to the harbour and enjoyed the sounds and smells of the sea as well as a glorious sunset. Looking south from the harbour there are some great views of the town and its seafront and I managed to get this shot with the setting sun and orange clouds reflecting in the windows of properties just beyond the shore. You can even see reflections on the water of reflections from the windows! Third-hand sunlight!
And I was reminded of something else. Jesus told his followers, ‘I am the light of the world’. And sometimes it’s said that as his followers we will reflect something of his grace and light into the lives of the people we meet in our daily lives. I hope I sometimes do that, I’d certainly like to.
But we don’t often realise, perhaps, that the people who receive that second-hand light reflected by us, also reflect his character and nature yet again to others.
What a responsibility we bear! The better we reflect Jesus into the world, the better others may be enabled to reflect him too. Jesus is the light. If you follow him be the best reflector you can be – others may depend on it! Not that we can change anyone, only he can do that, but sometimes he does use us as mirrors to reflect his presence and nature into our world.
Images from our Irish holiday 2024
For convenience, here’s a list of all the Irish holiday images:
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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.
I’m posting an image every two days (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.
Click to enlarge
After a good look at the Giant’s Causeway, we drove on to Carrick-a-Rede to see the famous rope bridge. The bridge connects the mainland cliff with the nearby small island where fishermen traditionally trapped salmon making their way to the rivers Bann and Bush for spawning. That industry is now abandoned as the numbers of salmon have dwindled.
The bridge has been replaced many times over the years and is currently owned and managed by the National Trust. It’s quite an interesting walk, and very smelly in places due to the seabirds nesting on the cliff face. Definitely a ‘strong pong’!
The island itself is interesting too, there’s a small house, no doubt built and used by the fishermen, and old machinery and a place to tie up boats. And there’s a great view out to sea, of course. If you’re visiting this part of the Irish north coast, the bridge is well worth a visit.
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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.
I’m posting an image every two days (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.
Click to enlarge
After our first night in the holiday house at Portrush we were ready to explore in earnest. We drove to the Giant’s Causeway, and the photo shows how many people turn out to see this geological feature, even on a damp and breezy day. It is an incredible sight, with the famous hexagonal basalt columns taking on a multitude of forms. In places they are weathered down to appear like an almost flat pavement (the legendary giant’s work in building a causeway between Ireland and Scotland). In other places they rise vertically like organ pipes, and in yet others they are still capped at the top by overlying sediments deposited above them.
As with the sandy beaches at Portrush, the coast trends east-west and faces north. What a place, rugged, very unusual and most impressive. It is deservedly famous! UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site, it is a Northern Irish National Nature Reserve, and it was voted the fourth-greatest natural wonder in the United Kingdom
The Wikipedia article listed below gives a good explanation for the volcanic origins of the ’causeway’.
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Judy’s Dad turned 70-years-old on the tenth and she made him a cake decorated with emblems representing his life so far. We met at their house in Charlton Kings, Cheltenham, with her brother Frank and his family. (1994)
Notes from bygone years – November (Remember, remember). Hint: Click images to enlarge them.
November 2023 (1 year before publishing this article)
Bristol Boxkite at Bristol Museum
We drove to Bristol to take Donna’s saxophone in for a service at Headwind and then spent the rest of the day in the city. We visited the museum and spent some time in the art gallery there. The main lobby still has the Bristol Boxkite hanging from the ceiling, reminding visitors of Bristol’s long and continuing contribution to the aerospace industry. We also walked down Park Street in the rain, investigated Bristol Guild, ate at a student cafe, and looked around the cathedral briefly. A good day out!
Erin (our cat) responded very well to steroid treatment and was fit and happy for the first half of the month, but towards the end of November she was becoming very unwell again and there was nothing more that the vet could do to help her.
JHM: I posted an article about Chuck Pfarrer and his maps of the Ukraine war; and another about Yara who lives in Kyiv. World events: An AI safety summit was held in the UK; and global average temperatures exceeded 2° C above pre-industrial times.
The Christmas cactus was in great form in November, and a couple of Streptocarpus as well.
We had a visit from two friends from the St Neots area, Jim and Kevin. Jim’s wife, Pam, couldn’t make it this time, and Kevin is living on his own. I took them down to Cirencester and we visited the Corinium Museum. Jim was suitably impressed by the tesselated pavements, and Kevin (a fitter by trade) was intrigued by Roman lock mechanisms and the workmanship of these items.
We were meeting at the Baptist Church in Bibury for a while to help encourage them with some changes and fresh ideas. I was involved in other meetings as well, and we were helping Donna’s Mum and Dad with decorating and getting about (though that was becoming harder).
I went to the election hustings where our local MP, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown was booed and heckled a lot. I certainly wasn’t inclined to support him.
There was quite a lot of rain this month, and a dusting of snow as well. As a result there was some flooding. There’s a concrete bear (a garden ornament) on a wooden platform on the edge of Riverside Walk in Cirencester, and the bear is our water level gauge. As we walk past we see him sitting with his fishing rod on a dry platform (usually). But the photo shows him during the flooding, still clutching his rod and line.
Donna was training as a teacher but was having some second thoughts because of unruly and difficult kids, she also wanted to spend less time running the Open Door Small Group since the teaching work gave her much less available time. Meanwhile I put in a claim for my state pension and we helped some friends move house.
John, one of the guys I’d met at Caffe Nero, was grasping spiritual truths really quickly. He was asking a lot of questions and understanding everything quite deeply. I found this very exciting and immensely encouraging.
I was meeting frequently with different people, there was the Open Door small group once a week, coffee shop meetings with some friends in town, and meetings with my friends Jim, Sean and Kevin rotating around our three homes. It was all good and seemed useful, but three such different groups! Another friend, Chris, was working through Revelation and we met for coffee to discuss this too.
I took my coffee shop friends Matt and Kev to the Newforms Gathering at Kidderminster at the end of the month (photo).
I wrote a short note on the old family dining table we’d been using. It came originally from one of my Dad’s relatives and we’d used it when Judy and I lived in Yatton in the 1980s and 90s. Now we no longer needed it as we required something a good deal larger; we decided it should go to one of my daughters (assuming one of them wanted it).
We had new next door neighbours, Annette and Jerry moved into number 126. And there were major changes taking place in Unilever’s IT organisation that would affect us at Colworth where I was working.
Mum and Dad booked two adjacent holiday villas at Ross-on-Wye and the whole family spent the weekend together. It was a lovely time, a great way to keep in touch, typical of Mum and Dad to organise something like this. They were both closer to the end of their lives than any of us could have imagined, so it’s a special memory for all of us.
Mum had no idea there was an alien spacecraft hovering above her head! Click the photo for a better view.
We had a new gas heating system installed in our home – boiler, radiators, hot tank – everything. The preexisting system was old, decrepit and very inefficient, so high time to replace it.
On 4th November I flew to Schipol for Unilever business at Rotterdam.
And we had a new permanent house guest, Truffles the cat. She was a gift from friends who had more than enough cats, and Truffles preferred being a bit of a loner (though very affectionate with humans).
JHM: View the predecessor website at this time. World events: Australia decided to keep the Queen as head of state; and Kuwait revoked a 1985 law that granted women’s suffrage.
Judy was getting stronger after the problems with the attempted chemotherapy. She was out of danger and out of hospital too during November. She had lost her hair and was wearing a hospital wig, but new hair was already starting to grow and the wig would be only a temporary measure.
Judy’s Dad turned 70-years-old on the tenth and she made him a cake decorated with emblems representing his life so far. We met at their house in Charlton Kings, Cheltenham, with her brother Frank and his family.
In November I bought a new video camera to replace the one stolen in August while were on holiday. This time I bought one of the new, higher resolution Hi-8 cameras. The photo of Beth was made from a VHS copy of a Hi-8 original.
Debbie was probably playing clarinet around this time, but I don’t recall if they ever attempted a piano/clarinet duet!
World events: Dial-up internet was introduced in the USA; while the East German communist government resigned and the Berlin Wall came down.
I developed a DECO database for the Plant Science Division at Long Ashton Research Station to improve the processing and storage of bibliographic information.
This month we had a bit of a breakthrough. My boss at Long Ashton, Ken Stott, put us in touch with a friend of his who was a bank manager; we were then offered good terms on a mortgage.
During the interview we had to hide the fact that Judy was pregnant, as her income had been taken into account.
John Jefferies and Son Ltd published their Christmas bulb offer (see the full details, but don’t place an order – they’ve sold out!)
My Granny (Nor) celebrated her 80th birthday and the family gathered for photos and a short celebration at Uncle John’s house, 4 Tower Street, Cirencester.
In the photo – Back row: Cousin Tim, me, Uncles Bob, John and Dick, cousin Jeremy, and my Dad. Middle row: Judy, Aunty Betty (Bob’s wife), Pippa (Jeremy’s wife), My Mum, and Deirdre (Tim’s wife). Front row Aunty Jo (John’s wife), Nor, and Aunt Millicent (Dick’s wife).
Bonfire Night on 5th November was always an important calendar date when I was a child, and indeed right up until recently. It’s gradually been replaced by Halloween over the last ten or twenty years.
This triple Roman candle was the prize firework item in my parent’s back garden in 1964. I took a time exposure on a tripod while this one ran its course, and the photo came out remarkably well. I was 16-years-old and in the Lower Sixth at Cirencester Grammar School.
World events: NASA launched Mariner 4 to Mars; and France tested an atomic bomb underground in Algeria.
I was still in my first term at Cirencester Grammar School. My classroom was in the southernmost of the three Prefab Classrooms; the first year forms 1A, 1B and 1X had these three rooms, perhaps because they were a little way away from the classrooms for the older pupils.
It was an easy walk to the playground where the tuckshop was (it’s important to get important details sorted out as early as possible).
World events: The first section of the M1 Motorway opened; and the MOSFET transistor was invented in the USA.
I was in my second year at Querns School, and half way through the first term. I think that we had Miss Hourihane as our teacher for this second year as well as my first year, although I can’t be sure about that.
I joined the Trex Club, Mummy helped and I remember being a bit puzzled by the whole process, frankly! If you’d like to join, here are the full details.
World events: The first Godzilla film premiered in Tokyo; and a four-kilogram piece of the Hodges Meteorite crashed through a roof injuring a woman.
There’s little to say about this month, as in October I was 1¼-years-old, life went on, and we were still living in my grandparents house in Victoria Road, Cirencester. Dad continued working on the nurseries, part of the old family business.
World events: Oil was discovered beneath the Caspian Sea; and Winston Churchill supported the idea of a European Union.
Mum and Dad briefly talked about the idea of one day being married, and Dad bought a postcard of Cirencester Parish Church in the village shop in Coagh! They visited Uncle Samuel and Aunt Annie in Belfast on 23rd. On the 29th, Dad heard he was soon to be posted away from Northern Ireland, they were both very sad at this unwelcome news.
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This is the ‘Land’s End’ of the north – not a narrowing peninsula as in Cornwall, but here a long, straightish coast running east to west. A glorious, glorious place to stand and look and imagine.
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.
I’m posting an image every two days (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.
Click to enlarge
On the day after arriving at Portrush, we relaxed in the house, chatted, explored the town and its little harbour, and walked east along one of the beautiful beaches of golden sand. It was a chilly day, and cloudy, but I don’t think anyone wanted to go far after all the travelling of the previous day.
The land and seascapes here are glorious. A wide, long sandy beach is backed by dunes stabilised by vegetation as you can see from the image. This beach slopes down to the north until it meets the sea with the waves rolling in and breaking. A little way out in deeper water there’s a series of small barrier islands, some of them merely bare rocks. And beyond those, the open sea – the edge of the mighty North Atlantic.
On a clear day parts of Scotland are visible towards the east, while beyond the northern horizon there’s nothing but ocean until the cold Arctic waters east of Iceland. This is the ‘Land’s End’ of the north – not a narrowing peninsula as in Cornwall, but here a long, straightish coast running east to west. A glorious, glorious place to stand and look and imagine.
I have no hesitation in recommending Portrush as a holiday destination. It really does have something special for everyone – children, teens, adults young and old, nature lovers, for swimming, boating, walking – it’s all here within easy reach.
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It was good to have a whole week ahead of us. There would be places to see, plenty to do, great conversations, good food, and – as always on our family holidays – marvellous company!
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.
I’m posting an image every two days (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.
Click to enlarge
After exploring Springhill, we drove to Portrush on the north coast where we’d booked a large holiday house for a week. We were the last to arrive, and after the usual hellos and hugs we fell into chatting and laughing and organising our first meal together. It was great to gather round the table together, three generations of smiles and looking forward to our week relaxing together.
The photo shows all but two of us about to tuck into dinner, I’m behind the camera of course, and son-in-law Paz was behind me in the kitchen area, so you see a wife, two daughters, a son-in-law, and four grandchildren. The house was large enough for all of us, we need around six or seven bedrooms, a large dining table, plenty of cutlery, plates and mugs, and room for ten people to spread out. And we had that in spades!
Our first impression of Portrush was good, last time I was here was in the 1960s – almost a lifetime ago! It has changed a good deal, of course, and it’s grown much larger, but the harbour seems its old self, and the lovely sandy beach is just as I remember.
It was good to have a whole week ahead of us. There would be places to see, plenty to do, great conversations, good food, and – as always on our family holidays – marvellous company!
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Although it’s clearly the home of relatively wealthy, upper-class people; the house also has a friendly and lived-in feel to it, not just a grand house, but a family home as well.
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.
I’m posting an image every two days (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.
Click to enlarge
Springhill is an old house and garden, not far from Cookstown. The house was built in Jacobean times, and latter extended and modified in Georgian style. The central part of the house is the remodelled Jacobean part, with large Georgian wings on both sides.
Donna and I drove to Coagh where we met Debbie, Steve, Aidan and Sara, took a quick look at my grandparent’s house, and visited Tamlaght Church where Mum and Dad were married. From there we separated again and Donna and I drove to Springhill to visit both the house and the grounds. I remember Mum talking about springhill, but I hadn’t visited it before. The photo of the dining room gives some idea of what it’s like inside. Although it’s clearly the home of relatively wealthy, upper-class people; the house also has a friendly and lived-in feel to it, not just a grand house, but a family home as well.
The house was built by the Conyngham family who came from Scotland having been granted land by King James I. The village of Coagh was reconstructed by a Conyngham, and when the family fell on hard times and the direct line died out, Springhill was presented to the National Trust which extensively restored it and has managed it ever since.
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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.
I’m posting an image every two days (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.
Click to enlarge
This is a view of Coagh, my Mum’s home village in County Tyrone in Ireland. The photo is taken from across the Balinderry River which forms the border with County Londonderry (or Derry). The centre of the village is Hanover Square just across the bridge, and then three streets head out from the far side of the square. The road up the hill in the photo is Main Street, where my grandparent’s house was on the left hand side. The other two roads are not visible, heading left and right from the square.
My earliest memories of Coagh involve the old village pump on the pavement near the house (a little further up the hill), the village shop where my parents first met during the Second World War, 200 chickens in the yard at the back of the house, the loo outside in the yard, the kitchen range burning peat supplied from a stash in the cupboard under the stairs, and a large collection of black, wooden flutes in the attic along with a cuckoo clock. I could list more things, but I think that’s enough for now!
Me using the pump in 1952
The pump had to be primed, so you couldn’t fill your pail unless you took out a mug of water to pour in to get it started. It was fun to pull the handle and see the water spurt out clean and cold.
The shop was an Aladdin’s cave full of sweets, soda drinks of various flavours (my favourite was cream soda), superhero comics, stacks of newspapers in the evening, biscuits, Tayto crisps, and much more.
The chickens were loud and somewhat smelly. The eggs were collected daily and had to be cleaned with sandpaper, washing them was not permitted by the regulations.
The loo was a wooden seat with a hole in a small shed, and pieces of newspaper on a string for wiping your bum afterwards. It seemed very strange, no chain to pull to flush the loo like the one at home in England!
I think the flutes belonged to the Orange Lodge but had been replaced, presumably with more modern metal ones. There seemed to be dozens of them!
Images from our Irish holiday 2024
For convenience, here’s a list of all the Irish holiday images:
If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.
I’m posting an image every two days (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.
Click to enlarge
We visited the village of Coagh in County Tyrone where my Mum grew up. We came here for holidays when I was a child and I remember a lot about those times, the people (now mostly gone) and the places (changed a good deal but still recognisable).
And among many of the places I remember, one has always been the Lough shore with its little harbour at the end of Battery Road just north of Ardboe. There are changes here too, of course, but the place still has very much it’s old character. The photo looks out across Lough Neagh at more or less its narrowest point, and you can see distant mountains along the horizon. Here’s a zoomable map if you want to see the location and layout.
I remember an old beech tree at Ardboe, where people had pushed pennies into the bark; I don’t know how the tradition began, but it must go back a very long time indeed. Apparently these are known as ‘pin trees’ and historically pins and nails were used, but when I was a child it was always the big, bronze penny coins. Read more about the Ardboe pin tree.
The pennies were very large, 31 mm in diameter. There were two kinds, the United Kingdom penny with the heads of various kings and queens, and the Eire pingin of the same size, weight and value with a harp on one side and a hen on the other. I loved those old coins!
Images from our Irish holiday 2024
For convenience, here’s a list of all the Irish holiday images:
If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!
Journeys of Heart and Mind 
