Memorial Stones

a pile of red bricks

under a horse chestnut tree

memorial stones

At the site of the Califat Mine on the eighth of October 1863 a coming in of water filled the mine workings killing three miners:

Harry Clements 16

Jeremiah Rose 40

Thomas Bird 50

Paul Conneally

Califat Colliery

Swannington, UK

May 2017

Morning Rush

Morning Rush

From around 7am market traders arrive in their white vans and transits to start setting up for the Thursday market in Loughbohemia's town centre market place.

There's not quite room for all the vehicles at the same time and so thee are moments of calm amongst all the activity as stall holders wait for their workmates to get in with the produce, be it women's fashion, men's socks, fruit and veg or kettles.

morning rush

an on the move coffee

and a bunch of tulips

Paul Conneally

Loughbohemia

May 11 2017

Salt and Pepper

Searching for a pub we find ourselves in the North West Leicestershire village of Belton. One pub is now a set of upmarket apartments and the other doesn't seem to be open.

Russ parks up in the village hall car park and we decide to explore the impressive 14th century St. John the Baptist Church. There's a sign outside proclaiming 'John's Cafe - every Wednesday from 12.30'. It's one o'clock and we go in.

We meet a long trestle table with some older villagers sat at it. A woman smiles and says "If you'd been here three quarters of an hour ago you could have had lunch!"

They offer us tea but we decline and have a look around the church.

A man tells us the pub opens when it feels like it during the day and at night it opens but is more like a posh restaurant than a pub. The woman says we should come on Friday morning when the church "does bacon sandwiches".

spring sunlight

through a stained glass window

salt and pepper

Paul Conneally

May 10th 2017

Early Morning Bathers - Cannes 2016

Between around 7.30 and 10 in the morning is primetime for bathers, many of them middle to old age, on the public beaches of Cannes. It's fairly quiet at this time and the sun is warm without being burning hot. They come without ceremony and if getting changed do so under a handheld towel. Grandfathers and Grandmothers sometimes with their grandchildren but most often alone wading out into the warm shallows and beyond. And then it's up on to La Croisette for a coffee before a visit to the bakery for the first baguette buy of the day.

morning shadows
a swim first he thinks
then home for a shave

Little Onion


Photographs: Paul Conneally, Cannes, 2016

Heat Haze

The old lady passes some time with a magazine and a Perrier water in the shade of a café umbrella as she waits for the clock to come around to a point where she has to do something, be somewhere, meet someone.

She checks her watch, a mans watch, and asks me what time I have on my watch. I show her. Give or take a tick or two they match up. It's a quarter-to-eleven.

She thanks me saying she thought her watch was slow but clearly not. We share a laugh and I move on up the road to another pottery studio which seem to be everywhere here in the French town of Vallauris.

It's starting to get hot.

heat haze
we visit every shop
for the air-con

Paul Conneally
Vallauris, France
August 3 2015

Sunscreen

The Casino, Sainte Maxime, France 2014

I've only been in one casino, well only one where gambling takes place. I've been in hundreds of the little Casino supermarkets scattered across France. The casino I've been in where the roulette wheels spin is the one in Monte Carlo. It was thirty years ago. I left my jacket, my money in its pockets, in the cloakroom and strolled around taking in the atmosphere. It's a great building but really nothing more than a glorified betting shop for the rich to visibly pour their money away in.

And here on the front at Sainte Maxime is the dilapidated but still in its own way impressive casino. A building that for all the world could, inside, be full of vegetables, tobacco and frozen fish. I don't go in but wander on, sit on the promenade wall and watch people for a while.

sunscreen

a child trying to bury

a beach ball

Paul Connealy

Sainte Maxime

July 2014