East Neuk Daily Photo

I've been working in the East Neuk villages of Fife for the last few days. In the autumnal sunshine it's been great to take a break now and then and just wander around snapping scenes and odd things stacked against the new. There's too much to share in a single post, so many stone, timber and iron items and places that have rotted, rusted or weathered into wonderful shapes and textures. It's a treasure trove of old and modern oddities and cast off pieces. Strange how the whole "artisan" labelling has caught on too, every coffee shop, bakery and food emporium now has that tousled, shabby-chic look to it and of course the tourists lap it up (so it seems). I'm ambivalent about the changes, much of my childhood was spent here when things were less rosy, fishing was in a sharp decline and there was a hard and genuinely poor feel to these communities. Life was rough. It's all changed now and has become some frozen and preserved showpiece for the distant past and tougher times (?). Yes the old fishing and mining communities struggled and scraped and just about survived back then, when herring money built the piers and harbours in a quiet gold rush,  now all gone . Now they woo the visitors (like me, no longer local) with fish and chips, coffee and scones, lobsters and shellfish, pottery and the hard stones and wreckage of yesterday cemented back into place.