i am sparticus: In Pictures

In Pictures

“Taking photos of beach huts and fishing debris? My word Mark you’re the most original photographer ever!” (Anon)

Yesterday we went to Felixstowe. This is a recurring theme in my life and I’m starting to get deja-vu whenever I arrive there but at least this time we parked at the nice end. The reason for turning up was that it was Hayley Cornwell’s birthday and of all the things in the world she could pick to do she decided that we’d all go to the beach.

Here are all the amazing things that can happen on a mild July early evening on a British shingle beach: Swimming, pebble-skimming, eating cake, feeling rather cold, mocking someone for having their primary school swimming badges on their beach towel, taking photos of the sea and beach huts, debating the sanity of people swimming and playing ‘is the tide coming in or going out’. For the record I was in the group debating the sanity and the tide was most definitely going out. Also both me and Paul managed to get skimmed stones to bounce thrice although there is no hard evidence to prove this.

That’s your present she’s opening right now. See the look of confusion on her face? That’s because you thought it’d be clever to wrap it across seven different dimensions and now she can’t open it. See what happens when you bend the laws of physics?

Some point later, Hayley gotten given what seemed like far too many presents for one person. I won’t list all the amazing things she got because that’s her job and lets face it, you wouldn’t be that interested in reading them. Needless to say though, my present was the best.

After that we all walked down the beach to the tacky part of Felixstowe, the bit that reminds you of that time you were at that carnival and ate all that candy-floss then went on The Giant Gyroscope of Wildly Spinning Fun (now shutdown). Only being able to take so much garishness we quickly made tracks towards the warm indoors of The Pier whereupon our retinas promptly overloaded. Despite our partial¹ blindness² (or perhaps because of) we were soon spending all our 2 penny pieces trying to win a variety of exciting prizes, not least more 2 pennies. Not particularly impressed by my own skill at dropping coins into slots, I decided to branch out and see if I still had any gifting with the mechanical grabby arm machine. Forty pence, two goes and one Bagpuss stuffed toy later and my skill remains. Win.

Just out of shot, Three Ford Escorts with customised body kits, two overflowing wheelie bins and a kebab shop.

¹ My eyes rebooted in good old fashioned 256 colour after a short while.

² This is a lie.

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