A haunting we will go.....

I loved this poem as a child, I could visualise the scene  and every time I photograph a ruin it comes to mind. I find old houses and ruins enchanting.

The Listeners

BY WALTER DE LA MARE

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,   

   Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses   

   Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,   

   Above the Traveller’s head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;   

   ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;   

   No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,   

   Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners   

   That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight   

   To that voice from the world of men:..................

    When my parents married in the mid 1950's they moved in with my Grandmother, my father's widowed mother. She lived in a rambling old house on Wises Hill in Sunday's Well in Cork City.

    There had been a tragic death in the house some years before my grandparents bought the place. A young RIC man(Royal Irish Constabulary, who policed Ireland 1814-1922 before An Garda Síochána took over the Irish Free State)was found hanging under the stairwell. My mother said he was the son of a Butcher.

    Mam told us about several occasions when she was alone in the house and she 'd hear footsteps coming to the closed sitting room door. She would be expecting my father to walk in but nobody would be there. Or she would hear footsteps coming down the stairs and the door of the room would open but again nobody would enter the room.

    I was a home birth which wasn't unusual in Ireland then.  Women didn't give the graphic accounts of their childbirths in those days. My mother said the doctor brought me in his bag. Apparently I destroyed his notes. Serves him right for carrying a bloodied baby in his bag. It could have been worse, my brother was found under a head of cabbage, but I digress.

    Mam told us she never felt alone in the house. She said she was never afraid when she was on her own but always sensed a presence. 

    Older family members  had similar experiences and also remember lights switching on by themselves.

   Any member of our family old enough to remember is convinced that the house was haunted. 

   As I was born in the house I feel a bit of a connection with him. I feel that we must have met somewhere in the in-between before i entered the Real World. Who knows!

   My photographs on this theme were taken in 3 locations, some in Cobh, Co. Cork and some in Galway and 1 in Ring Co Waterford. 

Glenmore Cobh

 Camera Settings, Camera-Canon 70D, Lens Canon 70-300mm@80mm, exp 1/80sec, f11, ISO 160

Renville, Galway

Camera Settings, Camera- Canon 70D, Lens Canon 18-135mm@67mm, exp 1/200sec, f10, ISO100 

 Belgrove House, Walterstown, Cobh

Camera Settings, Camera- Canon 70D, Lens Tamron 10-24mm@11mm, exp 1/400, f22, ISO 100

 Mageen's House, Ring Co. Waterford

Camera Settings, Camera Canon 70D, Lens Tamron 10-24mm@16mm, exp 0.8sec, f16, ISO 100, tripod

 Mageen's House, Ring, Co. Waterford

Camera Settings, Camera - Canon 70D, lens Canon 18-135mm@18mm, exp 1/100sec, f7.1, ISO 160

Valley Road, Cobh

Camera Settings, Camera-Canon 70D, Lens Canon 18-135mm@18mm, exp 1/60sec, f11, ISO 100

 Fota Cottages, workers houses, Fota Road, Cobh, Co. Cork

Camera Settings, Camera Canon 70D, Lens 18-135mm@18mm, exp 1/50sec, f20, ISO200

 Camera Settings, Camera - Canon 70D, Lens Canon 18-135mm@18mm, exp 1/80sec, f11, ISO 200

Bloody Nasturtiums

I know that's an awful thing to call a beautiful flower but they have been the bane of my life for years.   I've just spent the past hour in the garden pulling out literally hundreds of the trailing variety that have infiltrated my patio, my vegetable garden and the wood pile. I'm not too bothered about the wood pile to be honest, they look quite attractive there but give them an inch and they take a mile.

It all started about 18 years ago when my father in law came to live with us. His wife had died two years previously and he missed her terribly and wasn't coping very well without her. He always loved Nasturtiums and had taken over a triangle of garden at the top of the road he lived on and planted the whole thing in Nasturtiums. When he left to come and live with us he entrusted the garden to his Godchild, Mary Perry. Mary loved flowers and couldn't grow anything else while the garden was full of Nasturtiums so she pulled them up and planted a beautiful garden there.

Grandad was horrified, he was disgusted with her, so disgusted that he wrote a poem about it.

The Nasturtium Garden 

or

Mary Perry

I often think of Mary Perry

who banned Nasturtiums from my life,

She acted worse than any mother

She acted worse than any wife.

I had a happy little garden, 

Nasturtiums grew there row on row,

And Butterflies cavorted gaily,

while bees supped up their honey flow.

Across my path came Mary Perry,

She banished butterflies and bees,

And planted in my lovely garden, 

Some ugly, twisted, blackened trees.

But worse she killed all my Nasturtiums,

She tore them up with savage glee,

and laughed at all my sad objections.

She did not give a damn for me.

But now I have another garden,

Nasturtiums bloom there wild and free,

I laughed at all her gloomy efforts,

She'll never, never, conquer me.

by John Kidney

The other garden he referred to of course was my garden. I spent the 14 years he was living with us trying to control the nasturtiums and when he wasn't looking I was pulling them up. He often caught me and he'd bang on the window with his stick, a playful warning.

He died 4 years ago and we all miss him so much, he was a huge part of our lives and I didn't have the heart to pull up his Nasturtiums until tonight. I had to because they were taking over completely.

I made this image for Mary Perry and thankfully she loved it. She loved him dearly and he loved her in spite of what she did to his precious nasturtiums. I was afraid it might be considered a little creepy but here goes, see what you think.

These were some of the nasturtiums i shamefully pulled up tonight. I took the photo of the nasturtiums in the glorious morning sunlight, the marble slab was just lying there waiting for himself to find a job for it. I selected the head of grandad in a an old photograph and added him to the stone turning down the opacity to make him almost ghostlike. I added the words from his poem because wherever he is I'm sure he is surrounded by nasturtiums. 

Camera Settings, Lens used, Tamron 10-24mm@24mm, exposure 1/800 sec, f4.5, ISO 100