Waves at Cushendun, County Antrim, Northern Ireland after darkness falls in winter 2021 – by Phil Smith

“I had around an hour’s time in Cushendun, a small village just off the Antrim coast road. There was nobody in the streets and the pub was closed. This recording took place after the dark had fallen on the small beach where a storm the previous night had fly-tipped huge shadowy sofas of seaweed. I was there for a radio feature, following in the footsteps of Louis MacNeice, whose poem Cushendun includes the lines, “All night the bay is plashing and the moon / Marks the break of the waves.” I didn’t know the word “plashing” but I like having discovered it here. I like that water can “plash”, without the “s”; and it seems true: the sea doesn’t have quite as much sibilance as it does in other places I’ve been to.”