After last week’s post and the great responses from you lot, I felt a renewed enthusiasm for this blog, something I haven’t felt in a while. Thank you, I should’ve asked ages ago. I went to the beach for a run the day after. I assumed everything was back to normal. It was more jammed with people than I have ever seen with a tailback into the mile long car park. As I jogged towards the less populated dunes, thinking warmly of you rant-lovers out there, I considered categorizing my rants.
Minor Rants (Inspired by one off actions that cause an explosion of disbelief in my own self): The person swerving onto a car parking space just as I am running by it…
Major Useless Rants (Ruminating strongly on things that will never change): Crowds of people crowding and seeming to find it enjoyable.
Major Useful Rants (Things that might change if we shout loudly enough): Dog owners allowing dogs off the leash to chase birds in the Special Protected Area by the dunes…arrrgggghhh!
Anyway…with the blog in mind, I have started making thumbnail sketches and taking photos. Photos. I take photos for all sort of reasons. Some are just snaps of something for itself – a stonechat, sun on the landscape – others are visual jokes like a piratey- looking bin – while others are notes or references for ideas or paintings. Heaps are a current favourite, heaps of anything, along with traffic cones, sandbags and road markings. If I die and people go through my phone they will assume I was mental.
But I miss my notebooks of old where I scrawled ideas, did quick sketches with colour notes so I am using that too.
Wednesday’s totter around about the cliffs was a “One Kestrel, One Bunny, Two Container Ship” walk. The kestrel was on a mudheap looking ruffled. Further on down the road, in a field, the bunny. On bunnies, they were never seen much around here until the great bunny explosion of 2022, probably caused by new housing pushing them out this way, but recently they have dwindled sharply once again. The local farmer told me it was because a ‘certain type of people’ (not the phrase used) have been shooting them. He is fond of the bunnies – and the birds (except the buzzard which eats baby bunnies) – so he has put up Lands Preserved and Keep Off signs all over the place. Probably too late. Hence, this was a one bunny walk.
Down towards the sea I spotted two container ships, one behind the other seemingly heading west. But checking their past tracks on the AIS Marine Traffic site, it seems they were travelling to Waterford port but being held off, probably by bad weather.
The rest of the week I was busy – painting, making an installation in gallery, purely for my own amusement (hard work though, and involves traffic cones and concrete. Maybe more on that elsewhere) and doing my proper job. It’s ony January 8th and I’m burned out already…see you next Sunday.
The Mermaid's Purse 
Most excellent post! Love the photo’s and am jealous of your piratey bin. Shame about the bunnies but they breed like rabbits apparently so there’ll be more along fingers xt 😃
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks CJ…I would send the bin to you if I could 😁 and very true about the wabbits !!😂😂
LikeLiked by 1 person
…yay!….
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe you could come up with a colour coded system for rants Clare, like the A>G colour codes on electrical products for their energy efficiency? The Scott Rant Index. You could trademark it and earn millions.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I like it Denzil..Im on the case.I’ll give you your cut in rants!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Great! If I don’t get them I’ll rantback at you.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Perhaps you could host a ranting contest one week.
I’ll never look at cones in the same way again.
LikeLiked by 1 person