The Old Shop at Myrtleville

The red building does the heavy lifting in this one. Squat, breeze-block, with a corrugated shutter rusting at its own pace and a smear of white graffiti for company. It used to be a shop. Hard to picture now, with the shutter pulled down for good and the paint going chalky, but at some point I remember there were HB ice cream stickers on the wall.

This was Myrtleville in October 2016, on one of those flat-light afternoons. The beach and sea are just down the hill and the village feels like it’s having a lie-in. The bright yellow defibrillator cabinet bolted to the wall is the most modern thing in the picture, which I find quietly funny: a shop that’s closed, a building that looks like it’s held together by paint, and then a small piece of life-saving kit doing duty where the door once opened for customers. The two-storey house behind it, with its lit windows and pebbledash gable, has been watching this junction for generations.

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