It's been maybe a year since I last took my Mum & Dad out for a fish & chip evening at the seaside, and I know we all feel we are missing the connection as time flies by and equally is getting shorter. So the other night we made rapid last minute arrangements and a very happy Mum & Dad climbed (almost literally) into my van and off we went.
The breeze was strong and deceptively cool outside the warm sunlit cab, so with the smell of salt & vinegar pervading the air, and later clothes, we sat and chatted to each other about life & love and family. After washing it down with a nice cup of flask coffee I felt it was daft not to go and check out the lowering sun as it began to set over the impressive wet beach. I left my folks in the comfort of the vehicle and wandered along the huge expanse of flat sand, textile-patterned with watery layers from the retreating tide.
I am so into my rock climbing these days that I find so much less time to take photos, combined with an increasing awareness that I simply don't want to shoot stuff I've shot so many times before. There was something so sublimely beautiful about the colours, reflections and intensity of light this evening though, that I found myself genuinely enjoying the looking and lining up of simple compositions in the vast emptiness. I had no tripod for a change and I was able to move fluidly and easily to benefit from the rapidly changing conditions, before all too soon the sun moved behind a huge cloudbank rolling in as it often does, from the Irish Sea.
I returned to the van happy that I'd taken some pictures for a change, but also aware that I'd missed maybe half an hour of the company of my lovely parents. I'm finding that time is harder than ever to allocate to the things I want to see and do in life, but that maybe small moments of lots of things are more important than long periods of narrow obsession. Actually I don't think there's much choice anymore as the hourglass is more than half empty.