Nebuchadnezzar's Lighthouse
At some point during the spring of 1976, my mother’s parents left their lifelong home in the West Midlands and followed us down to Cornwall. Moving here is a thing that lots of people like to do once their working lives are over you see. Grandad had reached the age of 65 and retired from running the removals business that had seen him travel to every corner of the land, occasionally popping up on our doorstep if his latest mission brought him within "stopping for tea" range. I was only ten years old so I don’t remember much about the big move to Cornwall, other than my mother's semi-permanent state of angst throughout the episode. We’d only arrived in Falmouth ourselves a few months earlier, my father keen to mess around in boats and reconnect with his Westcountry childhood as he was. What has never left me though is my grandparents’ admirable gift for linguistically mangling the lexicon of Cornish place names. Everywhere seemed to be mispronounced or simply misread. I still can’t drive through the village of Ponsanooth without hearing Grandad saying “Portasnoot” in his broad Warwickshire twang all those years ago. Ten years later my Great Auntie Joan joined her sister and brother-in-law by leaving the same West Midland town and moving down to Mylor Bridge; or “Milo” as she called it. During a visit a couple of years before her move we went on a day trip to Mevagissey, where she added “Nebuchadnezzar” to the map in a leap of vocabulary that was so abstract that it almost deserved applause.
Quite how my Great Aunt managed to juxtapose the name of a picturesque (or picture-skew as she might have called it) fishing village with an ancient Babylonian king who may or may not have burned Solomon’s temple to the ground and who may or may not have gone mad and spent seven years living on a diet of grass, we’ll never know. Maybe she was thinking of enormous vats of champagne instead, but whatever led her to the extra syllable and the rearrangement and replacement of various vowels and consonants is something she took with her in the Easter of 2007, just a week short of her ninety-third birthday; the last of her generation in the family to leave us. Mevagissey seems so much easier to say, but for me it will always be Nebuchadnezzar. All these years later she remains forever the uncrowned queen of barely tenuous malapropisms to the rest of us.
Another thing I was struggling to understand was exactly what Lee and I were doing here. But I’d stridently chosen the locations for the previous outing so it only seemed fair to go with the flow this time around. I’d been here only once since that 1984 visit, and that was just to park on the edge of town before taking part in a muddily festive Christmas running race at the nearby Heligan Estate. You may have noticed from my feed that I don’t generally aim for towns when it’s time for a bit of creative abandonment. I prefer to shy away from people, whether there’s a pandemic on or not, and I’m not awfully keen on photographing scenes where there is evidence of humanity. Rows of pretty cottages or harbours filled with colourful boats don’t really send the juices racing through these veins – although I do of course allow myself to be drawn towards something isolated and preferably old, such as the remains of a long since abandoned tin mine, a bridge, a pier (well Clevedon pier anyway) or a lighthouse. Ah yes, that was why we were here; there was a lighthouse at the entrance to the harbour. Still, I was concerned – there might be a trawler moored up beside it, or even worse a car parked under it.
In the event I needn’t have worried, although it became immediately clear that a race was on to capture the sunlight on the side of the lighthouse before it disappeared behind the cliff to the west of the village. We really need to plan these trips a bit more carefully you know. But to make things easy for a change, there was only one composition to be had. Admittedly we’d need to crop out the ghost of the lone angler in the bright red coat on the quay later (unless he was prepared to stand absolutely still for long periods of time), but it took no longer than five minutes from the moment of our arrival to capture as pleasing an image as I’m ever likely to get from here. The sun clung doggedly to the blue sky and kept clear of the gathering clouds to give us just enough time to capture the moment. Little more than an hour later we were heading for the pub, just about crossing Truro before the rush hour swung into action. Usually we take our cameras with us to review our efforts over a pint, but this time we didn’t bother, going equipped with a pair of books that will help us to plot our adventures through Iceland next September – including taking photos of churches. I forgot to mention churches in the previous paragraph – also on the list of permitted structures, as long as they’re sufficiently remote of course. We’ve found a couple on the map that we missed last time. Please feel free to share any you think we may have overlooked - we're shameless about standing on the shoulders of giants after all.
I’m sure there are lots of you who would come to Nebuchadnezzar and pick out glorious images in the picture-skew alleys and opes. You’d capture wondrous reflections of the fishing boats at rest in the harbour, because it’s what ticks your boxes and you’re good at it. But it’s not for me. I’m happy to have shot Nebuchadnezzar’s lighthouse on a sunny December afternoon, but I’m ready to move on now. For once I am looking at a location I won’t be seeking to race towards again. Give me the wilderness every time.
I think this is the final shot I’ll post before Christmas lands upon us and a few days of miasmic festive stupor pass by in the blink of an eye. So for now I’ll wish you all the compliments of the season, whether for you it’s a season or not. I hope you have a good one, and that Santa brings you that new lens you’ve been eyeing up on the online megastore.
Nebuchadnezzar's Lighthouse
At some point during the spring of 1976, my mother’s parents left their lifelong home in the West Midlands and followed us down to Cornwall. Moving here is a thing that lots of people like to do once their working lives are over you see. Grandad had reached the age of 65 and retired from running the removals business that had seen him travel to every corner of the land, occasionally popping up on our doorstep if his latest mission brought him within "stopping for tea" range. I was only ten years old so I don’t remember much about the big move to Cornwall, other than my mother's semi-permanent state of angst throughout the episode. We’d only arrived in Falmouth ourselves a few months earlier, my father keen to mess around in boats and reconnect with his Westcountry childhood as he was. What has never left me though is my grandparents’ admirable gift for linguistically mangling the lexicon of Cornish place names. Everywhere seemed to be mispronounced or simply misread. I still can’t drive through the village of Ponsanooth without hearing Grandad saying “Portasnoot” in his broad Warwickshire twang all those years ago. Ten years later my Great Auntie Joan joined her sister and brother-in-law by leaving the same West Midland town and moving down to Mylor Bridge; or “Milo” as she called it. During a visit a couple of years before her move we went on a day trip to Mevagissey, where she added “Nebuchadnezzar” to the map in a leap of vocabulary that was so abstract that it almost deserved applause.
Quite how my Great Aunt managed to juxtapose the name of a picturesque (or picture-skew as she might have called it) fishing village with an ancient Babylonian king who may or may not have burned Solomon’s temple to the ground and who may or may not have gone mad and spent seven years living on a diet of grass, we’ll never know. Maybe she was thinking of enormous vats of champagne instead, but whatever led her to the extra syllable and the rearrangement and replacement of various vowels and consonants is something she took with her in the Easter of 2007, just a week short of her ninety-third birthday; the last of her generation in the family to leave us. Mevagissey seems so much easier to say, but for me it will always be Nebuchadnezzar. All these years later she remains forever the uncrowned queen of barely tenuous malapropisms to the rest of us.
Another thing I was struggling to understand was exactly what Lee and I were doing here. But I’d stridently chosen the locations for the previous outing so it only seemed fair to go with the flow this time around. I’d been here only once since that 1984 visit, and that was just to park on the edge of town before taking part in a muddily festive Christmas running race at the nearby Heligan Estate. You may have noticed from my feed that I don’t generally aim for towns when it’s time for a bit of creative abandonment. I prefer to shy away from people, whether there’s a pandemic on or not, and I’m not awfully keen on photographing scenes where there is evidence of humanity. Rows of pretty cottages or harbours filled with colourful boats don’t really send the juices racing through these veins – although I do of course allow myself to be drawn towards something isolated and preferably old, such as the remains of a long since abandoned tin mine, a bridge, a pier (well Clevedon pier anyway) or a lighthouse. Ah yes, that was why we were here; there was a lighthouse at the entrance to the harbour. Still, I was concerned – there might be a trawler moored up beside it, or even worse a car parked under it.
In the event I needn’t have worried, although it became immediately clear that a race was on to capture the sunlight on the side of the lighthouse before it disappeared behind the cliff to the west of the village. We really need to plan these trips a bit more carefully you know. But to make things easy for a change, there was only one composition to be had. Admittedly we’d need to crop out the ghost of the lone angler in the bright red coat on the quay later (unless he was prepared to stand absolutely still for long periods of time), but it took no longer than five minutes from the moment of our arrival to capture as pleasing an image as I’m ever likely to get from here. The sun clung doggedly to the blue sky and kept clear of the gathering clouds to give us just enough time to capture the moment. Little more than an hour later we were heading for the pub, just about crossing Truro before the rush hour swung into action. Usually we take our cameras with us to review our efforts over a pint, but this time we didn’t bother, going equipped with a pair of books that will help us to plot our adventures through Iceland next September – including taking photos of churches. I forgot to mention churches in the previous paragraph – also on the list of permitted structures, as long as they’re sufficiently remote of course. We’ve found a couple on the map that we missed last time. Please feel free to share any you think we may have overlooked - we're shameless about standing on the shoulders of giants after all.
I’m sure there are lots of you who would come to Nebuchadnezzar and pick out glorious images in the picture-skew alleys and opes. You’d capture wondrous reflections of the fishing boats at rest in the harbour, because it’s what ticks your boxes and you’re good at it. But it’s not for me. I’m happy to have shot Nebuchadnezzar’s lighthouse on a sunny December afternoon, but I’m ready to move on now. For once I am looking at a location I won’t be seeking to race towards again. Give me the wilderness every time.
I think this is the final shot I’ll post before Christmas lands upon us and a few days of miasmic festive stupor pass by in the blink of an eye. So for now I’ll wish you all the compliments of the season, whether for you it’s a season or not. I hope you have a good one, and that Santa brings you that new lens you’ve been eyeing up on the online megastore.