To you and me it’s just a banana, an egg, a cup of tea, some spilt milk. To them, its their home, work, school, where they let their children play. Imagine if everyday was a struggle to survive, because of our ignorance and stupidity for these forgotten people it is.
A dish cloth used to soak up a liquid mess can suffocate a family on holidays. A cup of tea drank in haste can drown an unsuspecting swimmer, icing devoured greedily can rob parents of a child enjoying his first taste of snow. It’s carelessness, cruelty and down right ignorance that’s wiping this little known race from our planet and what are we doing about it…Nothing!
Look down people, you are squashing a world at your feet!
I’m looking out on a Cork summers day, thinking about a Kerry one. I couldn’t write this post yesterday, it wasn’t possible to sit at my desk you see, my arse just wouldn’t allow it!
In fairness I had pushed its cushioning to the last having spent most of Saturday cycling the Ring of Kerry. AMAZING was my repeated word of the day because, apart from the complaints of a blistered bottom, the cycle exceeded anything I had imagined.
The adventure started on Friday night, I got to the hostel late and checked in with an angry Kerry woman.
“You’re in the Penguin Suite,” she snarled.
I thought she was joking until I searched out my room. Kangaroo, Buffalo, Guinea Pig, Lizard, Snake, Giraffe…ah ha Penguin. I pushed in the door and was greeted by an Arctic welcome.
“You’re late!” Dee my cycling partner snapped (she didn’t really say that but Arctic and penguin go together so I’m taking artistic license!)
After a quick snoop of the dorm to assess our fellow sleepers…
“Oh I bet they’re taking part.”
“Look at size of their pump! I’d say they’re fellas.”
“Imagine if they were gorgeous!!”
…we headed down to get our bikes. Then it was bed for the night, our plan to go early, Enda Kenny was heading out at 7.30 and we couldn’t let him beat us.
The next morning, sleep still sticking my eyes, I was in Killarney race course without a notion of how I got there. We found our numbers, I took my first Instagram and we were off, out under the start line to join the mayhem. And it was mayhem and madness and all good words like that. The roads were filled with cyclists, most wearing luminous yellow jackets, like a brigade of pedalling council workers.
Chatting easily, we meandered back roads through breath taking spots, I haven’t seen the whole world but I imagine there’s not much to surpass Kerry’s offering. I had been nervous about the day. Would I be fit enough? (a pointless question when I hadn’t trained, training for events is a downfall of mine, it takes away the surprise!) Would the place be full of Armstrongs in lycra, syncing gps to rps to mps and muttering about splits as they careened round hair pin bends?
But it wasn’t like this. All sorts of people sat ontop all sorts of bikes. I passed a man with one leg as he persuaded his steal replacement to take on a steep hill, another for charity rode a bike with no gears and no brakes, I presume he got home. I played cat and mouse with another man well in his 70’s, he wore knee high wool socks, brown brogs and an aran jumper and would easily fit on the front of any postcard. At every stop there was music and banter, a festival feeling, even the sun made the odd appearance.
At the finish, bikes and cyclists covered the Gleneagle lawns. The atmosphere seeped into town and that night Killarney was packed with tales of the road. The best I heard was the line of male cyclists following a woman up Molls Gap.
“Sure she was wearing a thong. Surely she knew her pants were see through!”
“She must have been out for the ride.”
“Jasus it worked though, a line of us, I’d say at least 50, what do ya think lads, followed her up that gap. I didn’t feel the hill at all!”
It felt as though everyone was on the road that day, all in it together, pedaling hard for Killarney. And it didn’t matter when or how we got there, whether we struggled up the hills or pulled on brakes the whole way down, it just mattered that we got there. It was the experience, the people, the craic and the countryside.
I’d do it again, without question. Next time I might even wear see through shorts and a thong!
Brilliant video and really funny video of the making of the video (a lot of videos there). Anyway have a look, the music video is made by Rogier van der Zwaag using 4085 photos, madness really. The second video is a documentary of Rogiers sad demise!
I couldn’t believe what I was reading about these images when I came across them. First, I was struck by the colours, they are amazing, then I read the story behind these strange objects and I was stunned. The images, as far as I could see, are all separate but I thought they would have better impact in a group and so I made a grouping of them for this blog. Read the story of these canisters below…
From 1913 to 1971 five thousand one hundred and twenty one mentally ill patients were cremated on the grounds of the Oregon State Hospital. Their remains were sealed in copper canisters. The canisters were stored in the hospital’s basement until the 1970s when they were moved to a memorial vault underground. The vault was subjected to periodic floods. In 2000 they were removed from their institutional crypt, placed on plain pine shelves in a storeroom, and were left virtually forgotten until David Masiel heard of their existence and photographed them.
They had been soldered shut with seams of lead. Leaked traces of the human remains, a mixture of phosphates, calcium (from the bones) and sulfates, with smaller percentages of potassium, sodium and chloride (the chemistry that makes up from ashes to ashes, dust to dust) combined with the corroding acid in the groundwater to form secondary mineral deposits. From the over five thousand of these unclaimed canisters, Maisel selected one hundred and ten to photograph. He worked on site, in a temporary studio using only natural light.
Here’s a sneak peak behind the Prudence photoshoot I did yesterday. The shoot was about recessionista’s or in plain english, women who started business in the recession. Held Design was picked up and I got a call out of the blue from Annette at Prudence.
I was asked a few questions, it was a very informal and relaxed interview which helped as I was just a little nervous and then it was my turn to get shot! First was the individual pic and then a group one with 9 other girls all recession start ups. It was a brilliant experience all the staff at Prudence were great as was Tiberio, the photogrpaher for the day.
The article will be out in the march addition of Prudence.
I am currently working on a job that I decided, after some research, needed photography. So out came the camera. I blew the dust of the lens, screwed in the tripod and went all snap happy.
These are snippet of the results, pretty happy with them. Thinking of changing career to stylist/photographer!
