Wells-Next-the-Sea

You could almost believe it is the summertime.

Orphans: EastScapes Rejects

For various reasons, I haven't been out with my camera much at all recently. Feels kind of cruddy neglecting one of my few creative outlets, though, so earlier I had a trawl through my hard drive and picked out a few pictures from the past couple of years or so that I never got round to publishing on here. They all sort of fell through the cracks - either I didn't feel they 'fit' in the series in which they were originally taken, or I didn't like them at the time.

I'll not give them any further context than that. Homeless pictures. Orphans.

Christmas in Doggerland

Another couple of images lurking on my hard drive, from (I think) January 2011. It was certainly into a new year. Have always quite liked the image of discarded (natural) Christmas trees following the festive season. They make the unremitting misery of January feel even more bleak. This tree, dumped in the wash on the beach just outside West Runton, also ties into my neverending fascination with the decaying coast.

Deep Hole Formi(ng)

An image I found lurking forgotten on my hard-drive. I've babbled on about my fascination with coastal erosion and the lost Doggerland before: this is an unused image from a load I took whilst walking the beach and cliffs at Happisburgh, the village that is being slowly claimed by the sea.

Deep Hole Forming. Sums up quite a lot, in its own small way.

Warnings to the Curious: In the Holkham - Wells Pinewoods

Woodland structures in the beachside pinewoods between Holkham and Wells Next the Sea. The reality is no doubt far from anything even remotely sinister, but the knowledge that these woods were used as a filming location for the 1972 BBC adaptation of M R James' 'A Warning to the Curious' does give them a nice creep factor. James' East Anglian ghost stories were written in the early twentieth century and several were adapted by the BBC in the 1970s as part of their 'Ghost Story for Christsmas' series. Often set in a thinly-disguised Suffolk and filmed in Norfolk, both the stories and the films offer peerless, quiet, chilling visions of the loneliness and forgotten folklore of the region.

The ghost stories of M R James are of increasing influence not only to me: my former housemate Will is now one of the hosts of the excellent MR James podcast, A Podcast to the Curious. For fans of James, weird fiction, or simply neat and intelligent podcasting, listening is strongly recommended.

http://www.mrjamespodcast.com/

On the Sands

"I could see no reason why used tram tickets, bits of driftwood, buttons and old junk from attics and rubbish heaps should not serve well as materials for paintings; they suited the purpose just as well as factory-made paints... It is possible to cry out using bits of old rubbish, and that's what I did, gluing and nailing them together." - Kurt Schwitters

A lovely hunk o' driftwood on the sands between Winterton-on-Sea and Hemsby.

The Blakeney Witch Project

Walking the shingle towards Blakeney Point, I came across what I assume were the remains of a rotting, yet strangely-preserved deer - from the condition of its skin, I would have thought it had been washed up from somewhere after a period in the waters. Pebbles and twigs filled its cavities and it was sprawled in a roughly symmetrical manner, its hind legs protruding at roughly the same angles.

About a minute further down the beach was a stone circle, inside which were a triangular shape and the remains of starfish and crabs. Close by to this was a small cairn constructured from the materials found lying on the beach.

Nothing to particularly suggest they are connected or particularly meaningful, but in my mind's natural (no doubt misguided) proclivity to ascribe the macabre and the hidden to the world... I like to think they are. Gave an added sense of loneliness to the already strange atmosphere of the Point.

We Sail at Dawn: Boats on the Blakeney Mudflats pt 1

Apt, I suppose, but this rotting structure can't help but remind me, in places, of the skeletal remains of a massive decomposing fish.