Maypoling to Mayfield

So, an adventure.

I was in Dublin, in the Costa Coffee place on the corner of Dawson St., when Y called me and asked if I could take some photographs of a particular field in Clondalkin, West Dublin: a place near the Mayfield community, a little estate originally set up for a group of travelling fairground workers she is writing a book about. It was now well after six in the evening and the light was going for gold, but I knew it would hold for another hour or so. So I whizzed out to Sandycove and picked her up and we headed onto the M50, the evening sun in our eyes, and took the Clondalkin exit.

Thence began our interesting little adventure in earnest, meandering with a mazy motion through various estates, doubling back a few times, maypoling round various roundabouts, till Y recognised the place, a shadowy wee roadside field, deeply green in shadow, gorse-lit, with a line of scraggy trees cutting diagonally across.

I took a few shots, trying to get the field and distant mountains in. We were being watched by various hoodied locals on the far side of the trees who must of thought us odd enough, two middleaged hippie types poking a hugely elaborate looking camera in their general direction.

We then drove a little further on, to get another shot of the houses, though nothing much presented itself in the way of an even vaguely interesting comp. Then I found a place to pull in, near a drive-in KFC place. I noticed that a large square hold had been neatly cut in the tall wire fence nearby, admitting entrance to another longish field with a groove worn in it from all the coming and going.

I started to take a few shots then a beautiful tall teenaged girl walked into the frame and Y recognised her, had in fact known her as a child (which was when she had begun this book/project). So I shot a few more frames, also taking in some local children (one on a piebald pony, another on his bike) who were attracted by the activity.

Afterwards Y bought me a tasty enough meal in the KFC, the first time I’ve dined in one of those in decades. Lovely view of the beautiful evening in the large window upstairs, occasional cars passing and beyond them fields and trees. One could believe that this was still largely the countryside. Y talked about how this area has changed so hugely in our lifetimes, morphing from a vast network of fields and farms into gridlocked satellite estates sliced up by the M50 and other big, fast-flowing roads. And all the residual stresses that gather like little whirlpools: gangs, joyriders, drinkers and dedicated smack-heads & crackheads, all the myriad breakers of the peace; their own and others. And it comes home again how much an accident of geography any life is, and how lucky we are to be born into relatively untroubled places, and/or to have the right instincts to make what we can of what breaks come our way, wherever we may happen to emerge.