We might be in the same boat but I wouldn't want to be in your shoes.

pomppomppomplololalaa troubadours or maurading matadors we folly the lotharios giggling on rioja through the streets behind the Ramblas. Masquerading about in capes like zoro's with their moustachios armed with badges and rosettas. They serenade themselves into the Heladería and order gorgonzola and pistachios ice-cream. So we folly suit and it is unexpectedly good.

Are you familiar with these two terrible fellows at all? Handsome and Jetsam. And those other right characters Flotsam and Winsome. The tides and eddies of winter lingering on street corners hands dug into pockets. I wish the snow would come back.

Before the thaw abandon car to a halt and race sliding down a lane cheering at the spectacle. It seems imperative to be alive for ever.

Waiting for the snow to come back. Strip down the bed for line-fresh linen. Peeling away the onions of extra eiderdowns and heavy woven throws feather leaden cushions. Fling open the windows to let the middle of the night in and suddenly it doesn't seem important to put them back. Stowed instead sure won't there be more snow next year. And right enough when I wake there are seagulls in the air.

2010 rushes up the beach. Here, teetering at the edge I am on the pebbles before the tide or the sun. I make time stop by pretending to think about nothing.
The seaweed is frozen. Hands of leather shards wave at me. Piped in white icing like driving gloves.
Select shells. That one, no that one, something to mark the day. A habit. Like when we were small sneaking salty treasure into pockets. Oh for goodness sake put them down, what do you want those for?
A girl races towards me brandishing a fist of keys. A hole is discovered in my jacket. Laugh, then look back silently at the rapidly gaining tide. A lucky start to the year. I'll have to get some more shells. They should have snipped holes in our shorts pockets, we could have stuffed them with shells to our hearts content.
I'm thinking about everything and the tide is high. Time starts again.

With a hangover to beat the band oompapahoomp and a tartan ribbon in my pony tail I head out for the christmas sprint along my favourite run in the world. Better even than a Funchal promenade or timing yourself to the church door in Vigo. Better still than Freemantles railway tracks or whooshing past the rushes to Ladys Mile in Limassol. There isnt a sinner about except for the cows and four and twenty blackbirds. Good gravy, a handsome Billy Goat!* Across the road a clatter of Wilhemena goats totter about in their high heeled hoofs hoping to catch his eye. Even a snail takes advantage of the quiet and is marching across the road. I give him a hand and pop him on the verge. As I run off it occurs to me that I didn't ask which way he was heading and I might have just put him back to his point of departure.
My parents grew up streets away from each other in Belfast. They met when they were fourteen. From her bedroom window she'd watch him slide down the middle of her street on his way to the dance. She wasnt allowed to go to the Plaza or slip about in the snow under street lamps. She must have made it to the dance eventually because we're all here. Our goose is standing when I get back, is he done? Your goose is as good as mine. Time for a hair of the goat that nipped me.

*Erratum: Sources have since revealed that our Billy Goat is in fact a Jacobs Sheep. May as well be hung for a sheep as a goat. Townies eh.

We were in Bethlehem on Christmas eve. Before things got tricky with Israel and the lines stopped called at Haifa and Ashdod. It was the day it was handed back to Palestinian jurisdiction. Israeli troops had pulled out three days prior and there was riotous celebration and menace in the air. Everyone was carrying a cocked gun in their sock. Wikipedia tells me it was 1995. I was in awe of The Croatian at the time. We were trapped in a road block racing for the ship and came perilously close to missing it. He sat grim-faced the whole way to the gangway then fumed to the dining room doing up his bow tie. I sat on the bunk counting the cock-roaches on the deck head and thought that the realignment of international borders was hardly my fault.

Making ready the new Moleskine, a thoroughly satisfying annual task. The ceremony demands a Good Pen and a hopeful heart. Farewell constant companion of 2009. I'll pop you on the shelf now with the others, your leaves sigh, rest your spine. Not without sadness, it's been quite the year and we are both scarred with the scribbles and scores of the journey. If journalism is the first stage of history, the yearly quire is the first stop of memory.

My Fathers apprentice notebooks fascinated as a child. Oversized stern-backed exercises in engineering. Green and pink ruled feint and margin in imperial proportion. Stiff pages, before they learned how to make them thin and shiny, densely hatched with physics. Calculations and mysterious symbols in his neat light pen. They were incomprehensible and beautiful and utterly satisfying. After both my Grandfathers died small notebooks were found in their wake. Recipes or random words, repeated again and again in that long elegant scribe men used to have. A little shaky now, journeymen's knuckles gnarled by the float and the plane.

I often reach too quickly for the handle to a door in my parents house that leads from the utility room into the garage and stub my knuckles on the wall. Because neither the handle, door nor indeed garage have been there since about 1986. Like a ghost that appears to walk 18 inches below the level of the new floorboards. Habit, it's a hard one to break right enough.

We couldn't see the mountain because we were on it. That was in part the problem.

I have an ambition to see the Eiger. From Grindelwald on a wooden deck wrapped in wool with Harrer's White Spider some binoculars and access to good smorgasbord.

Stare. Blink. Blink. Blink. Italy bitter silent goes past. We drive into the mountains. 

I love tug boats. Beasts of things under the water too when you see them out of it. Like icebergs, big pelican-billed icebergs. They churn through the water throwing up a fabulous wake. After I had portholes I'd often wake to a thump, a powerful diesel roar and a pair of oil-skin boots. The Push Here was painted on the other side of my exterior bulkhead. I didn't mind a bit. The first time I pulled into New York the Margaret Moran hauled us up the Hudson. The Hudson tugs are named after gangsters molls. At least that's what's in my head though I don't know why.

See. I could keep going you know. The old Mju II again. Fixed 35mm, sharp as a die front to back. There's three under the stairs. Where's the point in that.

I've a fascination for them and quite a collection. All shapes and sizes from around the world. I'm interested in other people's viewpoints.

Fried green bananas at the Church Street Cafe. A cold Banks and a jaw with the old boys. Jump the reggae bus to Mullins Bay for two fingers of Four Square and the sun downs. The new turtles flip flap for the foam and the moon tides. Reflect that nothing really happened today and nothing will really happen tomorrow. Extraordinary.

Seemingly St Petersburg did this to me. I found the relentless monotonous rhythm utterly fascinating. And it wasn't a stylistic phase either, these images were shot nine years before the port freight train. I completely forgot about them. This time I hunkered stationary.