Shoreline

It's cold. My default weekend outfit is an Aran poloneck, jeans and boots. My fingers don't really want to be outside, and I have a pair of outdoor photography gloves sitting in my Amazon basket, though frugality is procrastinating the actual purchase.

But this weekend it's spirit-liftingly bright and the better half of the year seems finally within sight. Yesterday I was at work till early afternoon, but the camera was in the boot of the car, waiting for a quick getaway to the beach.

I chose Millisle, gateway to a Peninsula circuit. The tide was almost fully in, and the shots I'd envisaged weren't going to happen. But there's always something beautiful to photograph, and my eye was drawn to the patterns on the sand at the edge of the water, where waves and sun combined in elegant sculpted textures. 

I took a series of almost abstract shots in gentle focus, until my fingers started expressing too much displeasure at the temperature. Time to click the button on my Amazon cart.

Silas Fretwell

Silas Fretwell, banjo player.

Boxing day, over a month ago. Northern Ireland was at its winter best, and the very game J went along with my styling ideas and posed moodily on a range of beaches round the Ards peninsula. Also in the alleyway behind my house, where one thoughtful neighbour has provided a beautiful weathered black backdrop as his garden wall.

I love projects like this. The combination of developing the concept, imagining the styling, finding the clothing and props, chasing the most beautiful weather, and trying to get everything right on location is an inspiring challenge.

And this particular day was a good one. Sometimes what I've imagined looks really stupid in practice, but I was happy with this combination of content and locations.

We ended up having tea at the Portaferry Hotel, as J tried to regain feeling in his fingers, which were sadly unused to playing metal strings for such a length of time. I think it was worth it, but that's easy to say when I was hiding behind the camera, properly dressed for the cold day, and pressing nothing more aggravating to the fingers than a shutter. Maybe I owe him more than afternoon tea.

Something to do with the sea

I blame the government for my lack of photographic and blogging action recently. This school year we have a new syllabus in place for two year groups, which makes for a much heavier workload than usual. I'm missing my weekends driving round the country - I seem to be spending far too much time sitting at my dining room table surrounded by A level notes instead.

But I did escape briefly from the Renaissance church anthem last weekend to drive one of my nieces along the County Down coast for an afternoon. It was a beautiful cold November day, ideal for a ten-minute walk every time we came to a harbour or a beach. Also ideal for eating at the Mourne Seafood Bar in Dundrum the instant the light went. We had salt and chilli squid, whitebait and mussels, all fantastic. 

It's funny how a short outing like that can completely revive your spirits. It's something to do with the sea, I think. I had to sit down with my notes the instant I got home, but it didn't seem quite such a chore as usual.

November dusk: three gifts

I escaped as quickly as possible from the hectic city centre streets and drove past Comber to chill - which was very much the literal case - in more peaceful surroundings.

I was granted three November gifts. Out on the lough, in front of rolling pink clouds, a single swan fluttered down onto the reeds. Facing east, the colours were cool and dimming.

Facing west, hundreds of smaller birds congregated on the golden water, as the mountains behind reached up to darker streaks of cloud.

And within minutes, as I walked across the drumlins, the sun was blazing like garnets in its final bow behind the horizon.

Diary entry 76

On Thursday I set out to Ardglass with big plans to photograph some lovely details from the hustle and tangle of all the fishing boats in the harbour. I've done this a couple of times before and it's been very rewarding making something almost poetic from what could be regarded as a mundane commercial activity. It was a lovely, bright, cold day - ideal, I thought, for my purposes.

It turned out it was also ideal for going fishing. There were only two ships in the harbour.

So I went on further down the coast, first to the village of Killough. This is one of the prettiest places in the area, with a lovely sycamore-lined main street. It's easy to imagine what it would have been like in its busy nineteenth century days as a port for grain export.

Feeling a little as if I was in the Van Morrison song "Coney Island" (although if you check the lyrics carefully, his route seems somewhat odd...) I continued round the coast. And the beach at Minerstown provided me with enough lovely shots to compensate for the fishing boat disappointment. It was so cold that my frozen fingers had a lot of trouble changing lenses at one point, and the one that's my pride and joy came close to falling onto the rocks. But every time I was about to leave, shivering and whimpering, the sun would emerge at a new angle and present me with a different kind of beautiful.

On the way home I executed a dangerously sudden stop at Seaforde, with the notion of photographing the picturesque church. The sky was darkening by now, but I tried a few angles and was pleased enough to plan a return in kinder light.

N307: no angel

Belfast City Cemetery's ivy-draped Victorian paths are watched over by a detachment of stone angels. These creatures, more beautiful now with their missing arms and noses than they must have been when they were first carved, decorate dozens of graves. 

Many of them were set in place at a woman's tomb - they seem to reflect an idealistic attitude to middle-class or wealthy women that might have been prevalent in the late nineteenth century in a city like Belfast. They must have been expensive to commission. They're all different, and some of the carving is really fabulous. 

Perhaps these angels provided a focus for the grief of a bereaved family. Perhaps they were intended too to show others how much the departed loved one was valued and missed. 

Margaret Service

Eva Kenmare

Joseph Davison

Margaret Baird

Rebecca Peacock

Mary Inglis


Some of my ancestors are buried in Belfast City Cemetery. Catherine and Alexander Bryans, my great-great-grandparents, and their daughter Isabella, my great-great-aunt, lie in plot N307.

The Bryans family had moved to Belfast for work from Clones, having lost three of their six children there already. (You can read about their life in Clones here.) I always think that Isabella might have worked in a mill, judging from the addresses round the Crumlin Road at which they lived. Both remaining sons trained as painters with their father but went on to become Methodist ministers (and you can read about that here).

Alexander, a painter and decorater, died in 1896, at the age of 55, of lead poisoning. Isabella died four years later, aged 32. Her burial certificate states the cause of death as "debility". Catherine succumbed to cancer in 1905, aged 62.

Also buried in N307 is William Alexander Hewitt, aged three months. He was the child of Isaac and Anna Hewitt, with whom Catherine lodged in her widowhood. Isaac was a friend of William, my great-grandfather, and his younger brother Alex, after whom the child was named. Little William died in 1899, and I imagine that Catherine, as the proprietor of a recently established grave plot, offered it as a resting place for her friends' baby.

There is no angel at N307. There isn't even a gravestone or an iron marker. It would have been too expensive.

Today it's just a patch of grass between the stone grave-beds of two richer families.

I visited it this afternoon. I walked towards it through an avenue of big headstones, with my hood up, sheltering from the cold Belfast rain. I felt both sad and proud to stand by our unmarked green patch. This was a brave, devout, fractured, transplanted family. Each of them in turn was sorely missed and mourned. But they have no angel.

There I was, standing crying on my great-great-granny's bones, and a thought came to me: We are their angels. Nobody carved stones for them, but they have a heritage of flesh and love, creativity, intellect, faith and integrity. We are their angels.

I tied a black cotton ribbon round the bunch of flowers I'd brought, set it gently on the grave, and walked back down the Falls Road in the rain.

Portaferry, troubled

To Portaferry, in the finger-numbing mist of last Saturday. The boats were as worn and beautiful as ever. The houses my grandfather and his father lived in still make me happy. I found nice new architectural details, and a lovely lustre-ware jug in a charity shop.

But I worry for this town that's so close to my heart.

The hotel has closed. This seems like an insurmountable loss. Everything seems to have faded and failed.

You can see that people are trying hard, pulling together, setting up community initiatives, attempting to keep everything from falling apart too much.

Maybe it's a phase, a winter hibernation before the town wakes up refreshed for the summer. I hope so. It's painful to see this beloved elderly relative suffer.