Christmas 2025. 

A special treat; spending time with my children, their family and all of us living together in one house for two whole days. 

A Vancouver Christmas.
Via New York.

For what better way to get into the Christmas spirit than to walk the streets of that spectacular city, all decked out for Christmas. The last time we visited New York was at Christmas 30 years ago. So many changes; tall thin, unbelievably high sky scrapers dwarfing the Empire State Building. The museum at Ground Zero; a very moving tribute to the many who lost their lives in 9/11. The leafy highline walk giving vistas from a raised viewpoint. 

All of these we visited. After breakfast we set ourselves up for the day with a game of table tennis and table football in the lobby of our hotel . OH ( my other half) won every time. I didn't mind. I was just glad to play the games of my youth before stepping out into the bracing cold of the city. Full thermals required, 

I carried a tiny Olympus camera in my pocket. This was not a photography trip. But if I had stayed longer, and been alone, I would have focused on the justaposition of trees and high rise buildings. Nature in the city. 

Black and white or colour?

A difficult choice. 

I enjoy both.

Last time we visited with children in tow. This time we were free to wander and walk, eat bagels and visit art galleries. 

I really wanted to see the Guggenheim, having been blown away by the Guggenheim in Bilbao in 2023. 

Suffice to say that I didn't take any photos of the New York Guggenheim. It was so much smaller and less spectacular than its Spanish contemporary. The art on show was political and didn't resonate with my festive mood. 

It was completed in 1959, 38 years before the Spanish version, so it seems unfair to compare the two. But I have. I can only say that I was not uplifted in the way I anticipated.

I had no expectations for MOMA, the museum of Modern Art in New York, and it far exceeded my expectations. OH was also greatly impressed, a rare happening in an art gallery. So many famous artists and a spacious, attractive layout. We spent a whole afternoon there soaking in the wonders.

I enjoyed exploring how other photographers had captured the city. Going in close to create abstracts with windows, or using intentional camera movement to accentuate the lights at night.

I fell in love with Matthew Wong's oil painting 'Unknown pleasures" 2019. It reminds me of everything that I hold dear. Nature, mountains and flowing water, or is it an undulating road? 

I was highly amused to find an exhibit of the very same brown paper bags that I used to make cyanotypes on during my residency at Vashon Island. My cyanotypes were rejected for the Vashon alumni exhibition this year, and not surprising, as they were rough and ready, made as an experiment.

If only I had left them unaldulterated as simple functional bags I might have made it into MOMA!

And yes, there were works by Monet, VanGogh and Rothko. Ansel Adams and Irving Penn. But I was also really taken with an image of olive trees in African heat by JoAnn Verburg. It has the feel of pages in a book, with the trees framed and hung as a quadriptych, set in soft African light. Expansive and calming. 

And having seen some art we returned to Central Park, to enjoy the festive atmosphere. An endless stream of horse and carriages and bicycle rickshaws decked for the holiday streamed past us. Santa hats and cheesy music blaring out. 

I rode on the carousel with parents and children. I will never be too old to enjoy a carousel ride. 

I was happy as Larry.

And then we flew to Vancouver for the real purpose of our journey. To see our children and to play games. To walk in the forest and shout at the pantomime villain. 

Family traditions are made of moments like these. 
I felt very lucky.

So much has happened in the last few weeks. 

So much, that at times I felt completely overwhelmed and felt that I had taken on too much. Amongst other things I was coping with.....

• Redecorating at home; paint colours to choose. Thousands of match pots and bits of painted coloured paper around the house.
• a solo show  to be hung in a beautiful community cafe in Hextable.
• a health issue that has taken some time to come to terms with.

To distract myself from all of the above I booked a November trip to Madeira for a walking week in a group of 'like minded' individuals. Walking is the activity that calms me above all others.

Little did I know that the group would be just me and two other people; another group of friends having cancelled at the last minute due to a leg injury.
Little did I also know that one of the other two was afraid of heights and edges, and the other had a fear of walking down hill. 

So we muddled through, on levadas (ancient water irrigation channels), cliff tops and mountain paths, each hike being a challenge for one or other of my two companions, until the poor local guide almost lost the will to live trying to keep everyone happy.

I was just grateful to be walking, in shorts and t-shirt, and away from the worries of domesticity. I changed my walking pace from pretty speedy to VERY SLOW, and all was well. I also ate a lot of cakes. Pastel de nata and Queijada da Madeira to be precise. Delicious.

Unfortunately, while I was away a disaster was unfolding back at home in Camber Sands.

A disaster that beats all other environmental disaters on the local coast hands down; the release of millions of plastic biobeads into the sea from Southerm Water's Eastbourne Wastewater Treatment Works.

A big enough problem to reach the national news. A beautiful sandy beach covered with millions of black plastic beads. An environmental disaster on a grand scale. 

I felt distressed not to be able to turn up with the other many local people to help try and clear the beach of the beads. I have done beach surveys counting these biobeads in the past with Strandliners, and know how devastated their leaders will be. 

I followed the news each day, only to learn that Southern Water had been found culpable. I wanted to be there. 

I finally made it to the beach on Sunday; nearly two weeks after the spill. Many sacksful of pellets had already been removed from the beach by volunteers. 

Staff from Southern Water were sieving the sand in a slow and laborious way. It was a depressing sight. 

I made a video of the process for Instagram. 

The video shows the sieving of sand, and the collection of biobeads so much better than any still photo can. But because I know not everyone can access the video, here are some photos anyway.

The early clean up operation undertaken by Strandliners and  @nurdlecoasts is now on hold until the next spring tide. This is a particularly high tide around the time of a full moon, which will carry the beads further up onto the beach, and hopefully allow another collection of washed up beads using a microplastic vacuum which can only work on soft sand.

The whole event makes me very sad. 

A feeling of 'solastagia'.

Solastalgia is the distress caused by negative environmental changes to a person's home environment. It is being felt by so many local people.

I created the book 'Shore' last year about man's behaviour in relation to the sea shore. A book created in frustration at the way we treat our beautiful coastline.
​
On one of the pages I wrote;

It shouldn't have happened. 

There are no words.