Dolphin Address 14
October 30th 2007
Instead of all these beautiful photos and stories I try to put down here, I’d like to portray now the missed opportunities. It is particularly an incentive inventory for me, as it shows that ‘Dolphin Address’ can be even more attractive. Therefore this collection of pictures in words.
This picture is the one that triggered the idea to dedicate a ‘Dolphin Address’ to Missed Opportunities:
Just before Brannockstown I drove by a high, but fluently rounded hill. Sheep were grazing upon it, like you see here lots. This time, though, they stood on top of the hill silhouetted against a sheer blue sky and made me think of the previous ‘Dolphin Address’, in which ‘fleece clouds were grazing the horizon’. I had done some shopping in Kilcullen and had not taken my camera along.
At the climber rocks opposite Poul Sallagh there often is quite a crowd. People are waiting in line, hanging in ropes or are triumphantly shouting directions down. Although they park their cars as close by as possible, they are radiating sportsmanship. Until I noticed a serious defect in the hardliners line up. Two, apparently mismatched spouses, had installed their directors folding chairs on a spot where they would not miss any plunging down. I just drove by.
In Ireland a strong demand has developed for spotted horses. Recently I saw one standing out against the bog. The brown colours got lost in the background. This time I did have my camera with me, but the pictures I took showed unidentifiable fragments of horse. Even if you knew they did not come together.
The storm blew the coffee out of my beaker and although I had squarely swum around White Strand Dusty had not shown.
As it was dangerously clumsy to exit at the rocks I swam towards the slipway. There I had to wade up to my middle through the washed up seaweed. Who can describe my amazement, let me do it myself, when all of a sudden a medium sized fish jumped out of the weeds right before me. In such weather I don’t take my camera out and moreover, when someone asked me what species I had met, I could say no more as we had not been introduced.
Roughly six years ago a large a dung fly was sitting on the bonnet of my car all the way from Fanore to Ballyvaughan.
He sat there as if glued on to it and even hung in the bends against the centrifugal force. As soon as we arrived in Ballyvaughan I went for my camera, but I was too late. My fly had flown.
Only when I came back to the meadow and in great expectation downloaded my camera to the computer, I saw that in front of the most promising belvedere shot a telephone cable hanging like a sagged horizon.
There’s no use crying over spilled milk, so for contrast and to end on a pleasant note a picture I took from within the car driving about 80 and aiming at the rainbow, totally unaware of the birds. I count my blessings, one by one.
Jan Ploeg, Meadow Fanore, October 30th 2007
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