
“I’ve been searching for the hidden bay
Well it’s a long, long way ,the hidden bay”
– The Chills,‘Hidden Bay’(1984).

“I’ve been searching for the hidden bay
Well it’s a long, long way ,the hidden bay”
– The Chills,‘Hidden Bay’(1984).
A simply gorgeous , and really slowed down version of the Beatles classic by UK artist Thea Gilmore – is it sacrilege to say one prefers it to the original?

….not the sort of wall that keeps people in, like the Berlin Wall, or one that would keep the Mexicans out….

“There is still time to go yet, there are still places to go, new friends to make, maybe new songs to write and sing and jokes to tell.”
– Billy Connolly, ‘Made In Scotland’ (documentary),2018.

“You can volunteer to take life seriously but it is gonna get you, they are going to win over you, it is harsh, but you can either break down and complain about how miserable your life is or have a go of it and survive. I think that is the basis of it all”
– Billy Connolly, ‘Made In Scotland’ (documentary), 2018


This is the last pic from my 2017 sojourn to Georgia and South Carolina for the moment: a group of large horseshoe crabs at the edge of the tide near Tybee Island.I was really taken with the primordial creatures, which are sort of scary and a little ugly, never seen anything quite like them! Real survivors of time and environment, inedible and armed with spiky tails. Sometimes we have to win ugly, just survive, but that is enough. Also, they band together and seem to need each other – there is probably some sort of message there too…

Man in suit walks his pedigree dog in a Savannah square at the end of the day .

See the last post….where the mayhem went down.
“Mercer House…..stood at the west end of Monterey Square, the most elegant of Savannah’s many tree-shaded squares. It was an Italianite mansion of red brick with tall arched windows set off by ornate ironwork balconies. It sat back from the street , aloof behind its apron of lawn and its cast iron fence, not so much looking out on the square as presiding over it”
–‘Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil’, John Berendt.

These epiphytic ,dangling specimens were photographed in the centre of Savannah, GA. One of the reasons I wanted to visit there was John Berendt’s terrific non-fiction novel of murder(and so much more),‘Midnight in The Garden of Good And Evil’. set there. In one spooky scene (set in a graveyard where voodoo rites are to be enacted) ,he wrote:
“A solid wall of trees rose before us on the opposite shore. It was a forbidding black mass without a single light visible……..Slowly, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I became aware of dense shrubbery around us and of the ghostly drapery of Spanish moss.”

This ,and the preceding photos, depict the aerial roots of the NZ Pohutukawa tree. They are thick, matted groupings, some well over a metre in length. The beautiful crimson flowers of the tree are stunning in summer but the aerial roots are way more fascinating to me. I am reminded of Spanish moss hanging from trees in the southern US, also very cool. As I went up to Georgia and South Carolina last year and loved the moss in the trees,have more appreciated our own dangling wonders. Will dig around for a photo shot of the Spanish moss and post.




Ever felt completely stuck?


“An injured lion still wants to roar.” -Randy Pausch
“When life gives you lemons, make champagne and leave the whole world wondering how you did it” – Marjory Sheba


“Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, miracles occur.” – Henry Miller.
