365/280-281 Peak or valley & natural framing

Apologies for the blogless weekend, I have been kind of in limbo, not really much to report and hoping some photographic opportunity or inspiration would come to me, though I do have a couple of ideas of pics that came to mind as soon as I saw the prompts! (incidentally neither of which I have ended up using!)

Yesterday we did a trip out with JB, previewed her some kitchen and bathroom ideas and changed her laptop without hassle at Tesco (luckily she got it less than 30 days ago and it has a shutting down thingy going on..) 

We also went and paid for our new sofa which arrives tomorrow, we have arrived in the land of desiring sensible seating as Col suffers with quite a lot of back trouble, a nagging ache really, not the awful sciatica he had before his two ops back in 2008.  We had two sofas about three years ago but he soon had to lie on them as they are too soft and he just gets sore straight away.  So we are trying out a nice Stressless sofa and if it goes okay we may get another. We tried a chair out too at the shop and to be fair they are actually more comfy than the sofa but somehow we seem to favour two sofas these days rather than single chairs (a remnant of nightmare Sundays spent at my aunties with no sofas or TV!.. God bless the Methodists and their curled up edged sandwiches and brimless hats.. sorry, but that's the stereotypical views from the eyes of a reluctant ten year old staying with me!)

Still every cloud etc.. the sofas move down the line, as is the way, and was the way when I was a young newly wed.. the spare sofa will go to our eldest girl's tomorrow night.

I have browsed my gallery and found a couple of pictures fit for that Sunday storytelling that Jen is so good at doing..as well as our prompts..

As the guys I work with know (as I ponder and mumble about it on regular basis), I grew up in a small fishing cove, at the bottom of Penberth Valley, just a valley or two east of the more famous Porthcurno, where the Transatlantic telegraph cables originally came ashore a hundred years ago. 

My Dad was a small cove fisherman and market gardener as was his Dad before him and my brother after, (though he hated the land work and managed to make the sea his home year round as soon as he could). We lived a simple quiet life (quiet as in no TV, telephone and very little radio.. can you hear that quiet.. not even the humm of a fridge, just the crackle of a fire and perhaps a sigh from my Mum as she wondered if the fish would bite or the violets would make a good price at Covent Garden next month..oh, and the Archers.. and the Fishing News.. Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight, and a hush as we got to 'Plymouth'..)   I know I guild the life with a sheen I am sure would be more tarnished if we were living it ourselves, but they were happy and the material world of the 1970's was but a wonder of the future..

Sundays were a day of rest, they probably really needed it, even if money wasn't plentiful it was unlikely that a day's extra fish or hoeing or picking flowers would make the books that much brighter to make a family day worth missing.  If the boats went out it was to take old friends out who came to visit and the women and children went along, it was a rare event and I cried a lot with fear as the few fish we caught beat themselves against the fish rooms doubling up as seats.. would I ever make it as the daughter of a fisherman I bet they wondered..

Sundays then..  My Dad always shaved in the mornings (he was a stubble sporting man again by teatime and it felt strange to ride on his shoulders and feel his face smooth and try to avoid the Brylcreem hair..), sometimes we went out on the cliffs for a walk, perhaps up to our friends at the farm a couple of miles across the fields or perhaps to my Gran's at St Buryan, but this was a decent walk and it would have been when I was in the pushchair. 

The cove always got its fair share of visitors, usually someone we knew, in the photo below I am in my pushchair with Dad and his cousin's wife (Auntie June) is talking to me, I think showing me some shiny necklace, not sure if you know them.. a string of cut glass beads, all the fashion in 1962 I guess and I called them 'Johnny Noddies'.. don't ask as I don't know!  

I found a site called Dear Photograph here a while ago which is worth a look and this picture is a quickie attempt to make my own.. a picture of the past, in the same place in the present .... me and dad with Auntie June, in Penberth Valley, in 1962, in 2011.  (ideally it would line up better and be focused so the common areas look seamless, but JB was impatient and I was agreeable!)

And here is the end of that same valley last year, in fact if you turn 180 degrees from the site of the first picture, I love crabpots, though to be authentic I want mine in whithey but hey..and the lichen on the rocks, they reckon it only grows on housetops and rocks where the air is so very clean..  is that good enough natural framing I wonder?

(and there I was, again, with nothing to say..)

PS I have added this to Sian's Story telling and realised there is a theme.. ahh well, we did always dress up a little for a Sunday..