Sunday and the heatwave continued. After a sweaty day in the countryside we returned home for a late evening swim in a bay filled with the beats of the last DJ set at the Drakes Island festival. This morning the sunrise and dawn chorus are in the exact same spot with a cool breeze and cooler water.
All the same colours, just spread out differently
This is deliberately the last image of a weekend of Summer Solstice swims. It is an entirely composed and invented view of the Bobbers reality. Magic realism at its most local.
Magic realism is a literary and artistic genre that incorporates fantastical or mythical elements into a realistic setting. It blends the ordinary with the extraordinary, often blurring the lines between what is considered real and what is not. Originating in Latin America, particularly through the works of Gabriel García Márquez, magic realism explores the coexistence of the mundane and the magical, challenging conventional notions of reality.
Here’s a more detailed explanation:
Key characteristics of magic realism:
Examples of Magic Realism:
How is it different from fantasy?
While both magic realism and fantasy include fantastical elements, they differ in their approach to reality. In fantasy, the fantastic elements are central to the world-building and often require extensive explanation or rules. In magic realism, the fantastic elements are integrated into a realistic world, often serving as metaphors or symbols rather than the core focus of the narrative.
The Bobbers started swimming at dawn and dusk on both the Summer and Winter Solstices during 2021.
In June 2021 we were still living under COVID Restrictions. A lot of Bobbers bobbed both morning and evening Bobs. We had not returned to real life.
4 years later and real life has returned. Bobbers are not as free to swim twice a day to mark the longest and the shortest day. But being there and not being there have some significance for all of us. Including the sun. In the real world the sun does not rise or set behind Drakes Island when viewed across Firestone Bay from Tranquility Bay beach.
In the real world only 2 Bobbers bobbed the morning shift and 5 bobbers, a dry bobber and a dog made the evening shift of 2025. Other swimmers raised the number to nearly a 100 in the morning and about half that in the evening.
But bobbers and ex-bobbers, even non-bobber swimmers everwhere know how it feels to swim in this specific place and can imagine themselves there for those moments. And in everyone’s imagination the sun for sunrise and sunset makes a perfect debut and finale just behind Drakes Island. Magic Realism is a powerful thing.
Summer Solstice started with a burst of colour over Firestone Bay as two bobbers and about 100 other swimmers took to the sea at dawn, the conditions were perfect.
Then the Solstice took a more practical turn as twenty volunteers, including two bobbers, took on the annual task of painting the Tennis Club Clubhouse with preservative.
Then it was back to the sea for more swimming at sunset.
So much exercise in one day and not a gym in sight.
A day painted perfectly.
In other news, the Solstice was celebrated in the local Tinside Lido.
And, of course, at Stonehenge.
Celebrated as a timeless place of worship with peace, love and traffic holdups.
Another lonesome bob and a few minutes of tinkering with a phone camera and some Polaroid sunglasses and wet rocks.
Like all rocks, the rocks in our swimming zone are infinitely more colourful when they are wet and Polarised lenses enhance that effect.
This image is constructed by digitally double exposing two separate images a second apart and with some inevitable movement both me and an incoming tide.
What it demonstrates is exactly why this area is called Firestone Bay.
Lonesome Bobbing is not my normal way of sea swimming, but it is not unheard of. Bobbing with the Bobbers is the normal way of things for safety and sociability. Is it even bobbing if you are alone?
I wasn’t even truly alone on my lonesome bob. Two neighbours and a dog, were there before me. And thank goodness they were because in an attempt to capture a pet portrait I dumped my keys in the sea.
I was so busy doing the constricted-undressing- in -public towel wrestle I didn’t even notice their loss. When Tim noticed the brightly coloured key cutters bands and rushed in to rescue them. The photo is a fake, post-processing tweakery. They dried out quickly on a warm step,retrieving them I noticed the vivid colours ,created by bright, morning- sun and my sunglasses at a really low angle, close to the incoming tide. I popped my sunglasses over the lens of my phone camera.
Blurry but interesting, this impromptu image needed a little tweakery, but I might make a little polaroid filter for my phone camera for these brightly sunshiny days.
Lonesome bobbing, thankfully not truly lonesome.
I thought I had the measure of yesterday. About 5 hours of admin for two organisations that I work for. Some dog walking and some domestica. Serendipity however made those things happen alongside some lovely pondering. My early dog walk gave me a rare moment on the most popular beach nearby. For once it was deserted and I could get one of my ‘bad’ photographs to play around with later in the day.
The sun was up, the dogs were happy and I could perch on the drying rocks contemplating my day. But I was not alone, just at the point where the high tide had turned last night, there was a gathering of memorial flowers and some ashes. Someone else had not quite left the beach.
Just a small bunch of yellow roses signifying all the love and sorrow of an unknown person’s death. Somewhere in this Hybrid Printmaking image, of a spring morning at the tidal pool, these flowers create a little bit of the texture that makes this picture what it is.
I woke up this morning with a busy head. The sort of busy head that requires a list to be written for the rest of the month. The list is almost more important than the blog. But the blog is my calming moment.
But not so this morning. Jetpack my blog hosts have upgraded my phone App overnight and nothing is where it should be. This development will take a little getting used to! This blog will be brief because that list really does need attending to.
I also woke up wondering if this was a ‘bad’ photography day. Which I think it was. Aurally the day was fabulous. Mournful fog horns and distant church bells. The 21st Century was wiped from view. I wanted to create digital images that were truthful to the location but that still made the mist the story.
Brief and to the point this morning. I’m sure I will get the hang of this brave, new Jetpack world, but today is a day of lists and ticking things off.
Why mist? The Exhibition I am entering in the summer is about exploring the Tamar Valley with the Artist, Turner in mind. He and mist are forever entwined in my humble opinion. Mist and the Tamar Valley are also fairly frequent companions
But work for that exhibition doesn’t even make today’s list.
Silhouettes and sunset. 5 people are filming and recording an interview on the tidal pool slipway as the sun sets.
I’ve been lucky this week, my late afternoon walks have rewarded me with vivid colours, although these are enhanced, and dry conditions. The morning walks much less predictable. My feet have been quite giddy. Two outings without socks and boots. The omens for the end of winter are good, in my humble opinion.
I feel that any moment the need for thermal underwear will arrive and that soon after that the winter coats will be sent to the cleaners and then stored in the roof. Not exactly picturesque signs of a winter retreating but for a winterphobe like me every step towards Spring is a step in the right direction.
14th of February has been saturated with the colour red and messages of love for centuries. Specifically romantic love. I have always felt a bit uncomfortable with the whole day, specifically anonymous cards which always seemed a bit stalkerish. But recent years have seen the day gently eased from the grip of heteronormative love/lust to a day celebrating Love in many forms.
John Betjeman, a British poet, invented the word Topophilia. The love of place.
I am a Topophile. There are lists in my head of places that I love , places where I have a sense of connection and wonderment about.
The two pictures in this blog are either end of a short lane near where I live. They have visual beauty and the mystery of history coupled with an unpredictability because their appearance is always shaped by tides, weather and human activity.
Love is love on Valentines Day.
What are you most proud of in your life?
I think pride is a very hard thing to define and also quite transitory. Sometimes a cup of tea is so perfect that there is a moment of self-congratulation. Is that pride?
If I had clambered onto these rocks yesterday as these men did I would have been very proud. These rocks are covered in razor-sharp barnacles, climbing up is likely to have been very perilous for them and yet it looks almost effortless.
Pride in myself is not really in my skillset. Like most parents I am proud of my children, of course, they are wonderful people. But I can be proud of the most random of things, an observed kindness, wonderful acting, a beautiful garden.
I like my version of pride, it is easy to manage. The simple things that make life more gorgeous are worthy of gentle, transitory pride and I have loads of it to spare.
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