There's been loads of damage to the Wirral coast over the past weeks with some terrifying moments recorded on Youtube (see later).
But on Saturday afternoon the sky over Hoylake and Meols turned a deep grey, the sand looked orange in the strange light and the far away tide was a silver line of dancing surf.
Had I been a painter, a watercolour would have captured this perfectly, but by the time I'd stopped and tried to capture the colours on my camera, the moment had passed. Or as Seamus Heaney put it so eloquently in that wonderful poem, Postcript
"Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open"
By Monday there was a transformation and as we wandered along West Kirby front, the marine lake was mirror-still, the Welsh mountains stood calm as ever across the Dee esturary and Hilbre and the Little Eye were accessible over the sands.
and here we were looking right across to the Welsh coastline we explored on the other side of the river last September - see River Ride
and as we returned to the car, the sun started to dip and the clouds set in and the mirror images were amazing! Not quite as colourful as those I took back in August - see Ice Cream Castles but gentle in all shades of grey and changing every second.
Beautiful.
So here's some of the YouTube coverage of the high tides and storms this past couple of months . . . West Kirby
and Hoylake
and across the other side of the peninsula, the Mersey is battering Vale Park in New Brighton!
All the reasons why I love the sea so much. Wild, calm, untamable, unpredictable, ever-changing.
and now for my pics from the Southbank in the last couple of weeks as you listen to Sam Cooke's soft rendition
The yellow poem, New Year Dusk,reads: "Two black figures on the bridge/are old wooden posts/what else have I mistaken/in the year just closed" (Sonam Chhoki)
with The Last of the Haussmans thrown in at the National Theatre and Simon Armitage's Poetry Parnassus as the Royal Festival Hall and my first live hearing of the legendary Seamus Heaney reading his poetry. Two magical nights and the city so utterly alive.
Well - I did touch on this in my first post and included the poem 'The Bright Field' by R S Thomas but I should say that at that stage I was going to name my blog 'Bright fields and flaggy shores' to also add homage to Seamus Heaney's 'Postscript', but that was far too long!
Both phrases spring from my lifetime love of poetry and these two poems, for me, say it all about 'taking time to stop and stare' and those incredible moments that you just can't capture with a camera or even in words, unless you are a Seamus Heaney or an R S Thomas or some such other.
Don't want this to sound too deep, just that I love those fleeting moments of a certain light on a winter's afternoon or a rainbow or an incredible sky's-on-fire sunset.
The picture I originally used at the top of the blog, of a field with a bare tree and a storm brewing in the sky, was taken in an amazing area up in North Yorkshire, Stanwick Hill Fort, which we'd never known of before, where an Brigante camp was established in AD71...... and as we were walking around the old mounds and earthworks, the sun just caught this tree in the field although the sky was all dark and brooding, ready for another downpour. It was quite breathtaking and even mystical, knowing of the legions of souls who'd inhabited these now deserted fields so long ago.
I've since changed the pic to one of some sand dunes we came across in Galicia during our 2012 holiday there - because I wanted to incorporate my love of all things 'sea', and this is a sort of field with all the swaying maram grasses!
Anyway, back to the other poem - Postscript, by Seamus Heaney:
We've been on the Burren in County Clare, Ireland - the most amazing limestone pavement - so wild and beautiful. I think I once read that Postscript was set on the Isle of Aran but not having been there I have the Burren in my mind when I read this and it's close by after all.
Just lIsten .... and listen right to the last beautiful lines
Postscript
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
Seamus Heaney, 1996 from The Spirit Level
and read here his wonderful description of Seamus Heaney writing about Postscript and how it was a sort of postcard to Brian and Anne Friel, remembering a drive with them in South Galway. I just love Brian Friel's plays, having enjoyed the Crucible's Brian Friel season in 2014, so it's lovely to read this about the poem and imagine them together. So there you have it!
