I have a fondness for Felixstowe.
There's something interesting about the juxtaposition of the huge container port (Britain's busiest and biggest, apparently) with Landguard nature reserve.
Landguard pokes out into the mouth of the Stour/Orwell estuary like a downturned thumb and has lots of shingle, twittering linnets, and shy ringed plovers nesting amongst the flowers. At the port next door, a lot of banging and clanging comes from containers being moved around, the cranes zip to and fro (like those arcade games where you try to grab a prize) and harsh sirens sound at regular intervals.
As well as the birds and weird seaside vegetation, I'm intrigued by the huge game of Tetris that you can see being carried out by the cranes, which load and unload the brightly-coloured boxes from colossal ships - some 400 metres long. Substacker Rose George wrote a fascinating book about the global shipping industry - Deep Sea and Foreign Going, AKA Ninety Percent of Everything.
If you're as geeky as me, here's a video explaining how the container shipping industry works...
Anyway! Back to the nature. You can observe the comings and goings at the Port of Felixstowe from the John Bradfield Viewing Area, which boasts the View Point Cafe. After the trip along the A14 it's a good place to get a coffee before starting the day's meanderings (and the cake is excellent too).
We sat down with our lattes at the outdoor picnic tables, braving the strong breeze. There are always starlings around here, looking to take advantage of any crumbs. Often they don't even wait for things to be dropped and are happy to come onto the tables to help clear up the leftovers.
Happy starling with cake crumbs on a previous visit
The other people at the cafe didn't seem to mind the birds and watched their antics with amusement. But the wind was fierce. A bacon and egg roll had almost reached a diner when the top half of the roll was whipped off by a rogue gust, taking with it a fried egg which plopped onto the decking next to the picnic tables. The server turned on her heel and returned to the cafe to replace the depleted plate.
This did not pass unnoticed. The motley crew of scruffy, moulting starlings saw the helpless, unattended egg lying there. About a dozen of them descended and together they consumed the whole thing within 30 seconds. By the time the server returned to clear up, there was not a scrap left.
A stern "Do Not Feed The Birds" sign was on display but went unheeded. I love it when nature is disobedient.
The art part
I’m between projects at the moment. Actually, I’m still waiting for my previous linocut prints to dry - the oil-based ink is lovely to use but takes a while to stop being tacky. The prints won’t smudge, but I don’t want to list them for sale until I can be sure of packing them safely. Hopefully they’ll be ready for the big wide world in time for my next post…
As usual I’m being rather indecisive about what I should do next. I tend to see things and jot down ideas as I go. The current list includes:
Ringed plover at Landguard
Mediterranean gull on the beach at Whitstable
Peregrine falcon (more of that next post, I think)
and from looking out of the window today while working from home, woodpigeons building a nest in jasmine…
Some of the above will turn out to be impractical or unappealing or something else. Hopefully one of them will turn out to be The Next One! I’ve got a couple of other non-printmaking projects which I’ve been working on for a while now, but they’re not quite ready to share. Shouldn’t be long though…
What inspires you when you’re out and about?
Thanks for sticking with my first ever post. If you’d like to share it I’d be ever so grateful.