Casting a Net with Serendipity

Non-radical notes from the beach.

Rhiannon is looking for beasts underwater. She is wearing her mermaids swimming costume and shows me her tail which is green and only just pokes out from the back of the little skirt that covers it. We see a swarm of water fleas and she picks one up on the palm of her hand. It is so small that it looks like it is moving backwards or sideways, but on closer inspection it is moving forwards. Sea fleas are from the group of creatures called crustaceans, the order Leptostrac, and the family Nebaliidae. They are supposed to live in silty conditions but the sand is deep here. Rhiannon’s dad is standing at the shore with his two other kids. He introduces himself as Amos McLeod and we strike up a surprisingly long discussion about sea myths, ethnography and creative writing. He has written a story called Mac and the Beanstalk about a giant (Mac) who climbs down to earth from his kingdom in the sky via a large plant, however when he gets here, he discovers that he is actually really tiny compared to everyone else. Amos tells this story to his kids at bedtime, which usually makes him fall asleep rather his children; so when papa is snoozing the older ones switch on the DVD whilst the youngest hacks the computer. Our conversation is interrupted by his littlest boy, who is getting increasingly agitated as his big sister and brother are burying his blue crocs in the swampy sand. I don’t really understand what he is saying as he is only three and speaks Gaelic, English and German, but I can work out what is bothering him by my own experiences of sibling mentality. After the fuss is over and the objects reinstated to their rightful owner, they mistakenly leave the blue shoes behind on a rock.

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Lesley the local school-teacher sits beside me for a chat, and we watch the visiting middle-aged man and his younger girlfriend appear on the beach again. He strips off for a swim while she stays on the shore with the dog. He is wearing tight small black briefs today, nicely secured so that they are immovable under the overhang of his gut. Yesterday I marveled as he nakedly swayed and teetered over the stones then over the sand before reaching the sea. He only realised that someone was watching him when he got to the edge of the water, and that he had to sway and teeter all the way back under a mesmerised eye. I wondered at his method, and why he had not worn his shoes to the sandline as the tide was going out anyway? To me this was an example of a pragmatic and perhaps constructivist approach to learning, where even in middle-age, the nature of the learner does not stop, it just becomes more poignant and integrated into the broader scheme of a life. Amos’s oldest son comes back to pick up the little blue crocs which we hand to him. The wife of Amos is also there, and instead of thanking us for finding the shoes, she turns to me and says ‘Your face is too red.” Lesley and I glance at each other then chuckle, and say in unison ‘German.’ Lesley is writing a book of her life in the early eighties in Western Ireland, which will be a partial study of religious and cultural restraints as perceived by an outsider. She tells of a time when (married) women were held up by the Catholic church as some sort of pedestalled dolls, yet when they were menstruating, had to walk some paces behind their husbands whilst in the house of God. The notion of woman as mother was revered, whereas the reality of woman with desire, vagina, blood, afterbirth and nurturing breasts was considered less worthy. The unwanted pregnancies in Ireland were notorious, and whilst the man in the privacy of a male only realm was patted on the back for not firing blanks, woman was sent away to be dealt with. There were no condoms available at that time, and many young couples had to try to make do with cling film… ironically the brand name for this was Glad Wrap.

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Hunterston B is a nuclear power station just Below Largs on the West coast of Scotland. David, as his name is for the sake of this text, has worked there for twenty-three years. He is currently an instruments technician but has had a number of jobs in the same plant over his time of service. Being a trade unionist he has hoped for state ownership of the company, and his wish was granted some time ago when the French Nation purchased the station. In his spare time David is a photographer of strange events, political actions and asylum seekers. He has spent some time on Nukewatch with Camcorder Guerillas tracking the movement of Nuclear Warheads along ordinary British roads which the Government make use of surreptitiously. He is very clear about his non-conflict of interest, and draws a clear distinction between the controlled use of nuclear power to light lightbulbs and the mass destruction that a warhead may cause. None of his workmates know of this secret part of his life and he is very careful to stay within the law. His only brush with near arrest came when he stopped beside an unmarked police car and asked them if they had seen any trucks; the English policewoman misheard his Scottish accent and thought he was asking for drugs. David likes traditional photographic developing, and through his conversation I can see that there is a strong split in his belief between the subjective act of the photographer whilst taking a picture, and the technicians role in the production of work. He almost dismisses the conception of the image on the film as artmaking, and instead views the objectivity of printing as the art, even though the decisions that are made on exposure time, chemicals and toners to produce an image, are to some extent pre-determined by the photographer. As we sit on the beach waiting for the tide to come in he starts telling me of his family life, his siblings and his parents; he also wonders why he is telling me so much of his personal life. I say not to worry as women always encourage talk of emotions and histories, infact some women are evolving at such a rate that their ears are physically getting bigger over their own lifetime to accommodate such a necessary part of being human. He thinks I am strange because I go into the water with a tripod, and has come down to take pictures of me. He has heard of the Selkies, and has an anarchist English-teacher friend who tells stories of mischief; he will put us in touch with each other as I need a narrator for my films. As I am about to go into the water he takes a close-up wide-angled perspective shot, which will make my head look massive. He says its not very flattering, but I know this already and point out that the way the mask is suctioned to my face it will make my lips look great at least, like I’ve had some kind of collagen implants.

When radical is pulled and stretched over a period of time it becomes quirky.