One Summer in Ballymena & grey Sussex days but wonderful friends

July 14, 2012

One Summer in Ballymena & grey Sussex days but wonderful friends

Hello world.

Oh dear..yet another grey day here in Arundel.

We have the Olympic Torch travelling

through the town on Monday,

lets hope we have a half decent day, weather wise.

Now,The JOYS of discovering

long forgotten photos.

Recently, I updated my
printer and scanner,

so I now have a wireless one.

That in itself was wonderful

...easily scanning in,

without pixilation all
those old family
photos and shoebox treasures,

which had been gathering dust

under the bed or in the loft.

Sending them out to

family and friends to

whom they all mean something

and receiving,
(mostly, ha ha,)

joyous responses.

This week I updated my old negative scanner.

Many years ago I was studying photography,

at Northbrook College in Worthing.

(Crikey, I was a mature student even then!)

Bill Philip was my tutor,

and he and his wife Linda,

became great friends.

He lives in Arundel also

and doesn't teach these days but

sells all his fabulous photos,

to great international acclaim.

http://www.billphilipphotography.com

Bill is often on the Arundel Gallery Trail during Arundel's festival.

Go and see his work, its awesome.

Sorry, I digress

Many of the pictures I took

all those years ago,

remained in negative form

as I always meant to

print them off myself.

Never quite go around it.

The joy of sifting through

the boxes and files

and putting the images through the

negative scanner is wonderful.

Bit of a tearjerker as well.

People long since gone from your life,

one way or another and missed,

including the younger self, of course. LOL

One Summer in Ballymena

Very many years, my life was going a
wee bit pear shaped and some friends,

who were from Ballymena in Northern Ireland,

offered me the use of their house,
in the gorgeous, coastal village of Cushendall.

Jay was around 11.

We had such adventures.

Northern Ireland still had tanks on street corners

and you had to be careful about parking your car.

There were some, who were highly suspicious

of an English numberplate.

All rather different to life in Sussex.

The people, though, were so very welcoming
and made our stay
unforgettable.

Conor, my friend's son

who stayed with us,

and Kitty her mum,

showed us around .

she took me to Dublin, where here son, an actor,
had started his career, and showed me all the theatres he had worked in.
I gather he is rather big in Hollywood these days LOL

The Giants Causeway

The trip was a lifesaver.
I don't remember how long we stayed.
It felt like one of those long, childhood summers where each day just ran into the next.

One day we went to the Giants Causeway.

It's a phenomenal, beautiful place.

My lovely son Jay....ha ha
Now a successful menswear designer in California

The boys we travelled around with, Conor, his cousins and friends, had such fun..

have a squint at these rocks...between the two you will see something
that looks like its straight come out of an Indiana Jones film...a rope bridge joining the two

The boys all wanted to go across and Kitty, on the far right, said "Ive got a skirt on I can't go, you've got trousers......."
Her voiced kind of tailed off ........she was right that someone need to go with them.
"Hells Bells" I thought, or words to that effect LOL

As I looked down at those swirling waters,
I'd like to say the adrenaline kicked in, but ......

I was absolutely TERRIFIED.

.........and of course....then I had to come back again.

I only did it the once ha ha

Cushendall

mist over the sea just outside Cushendall

Fond memories of
Great days...
beautiful place....
the most lovely people...

Not just a piece of 21st century technology , that negative scanner, now, is it?
Its a whole lot more....................