Sand and oil…
22 December 2011

My nan used to take me and my brother crab fishing here… We’d walk for three miles from Liscard; our pockets stuffed with string, bacon and Vitalite tubs for buckets. We’d wade out through oily sand and seaweed-slicked jade rocks until we reached the remnants of an old concrete swimming pool. In the summer it would raise itself from the foul dark sand at low tide and open its iron-rust + stone arms to hundreds of children. The same crabs overflowed from the same buckets for months until the water became so cold and the wind so strong that it would burn your legs and face if you got too close…
I sat here this morning and thought about how everything was so simple back then. I wouldn’t have been worrying about how and what I shot, or over the reasons for and against the visual over-romanticism of my home.
I would have just taken it, thrown it in the bucket with the rest of the crabs then as the sun went down my Nan would have booted them all back into the swimming pool and we’d have walked home with sand in our ears and oil on our hands.

Vale Park to Liverpool

Vale Park to Liverpool