SOME FRIENDS AND I WERE HAVING FUN AT THE END OF JUNE ... THE YEAR WAS 2014 ...

I had plenty of fun during that long-gone summer. In today's post, I'll show you some snippets of my ordinary life in June 2014. Have a good viewing.

This opening shot was taken on the beach. A friend was walking across the coastal rocks. I used a small, partially broken compact camera back then. Due to the regular exposure to salt-aerosol from the sea, the lens was cloudy beyond repair in some places, and that shows in many of these old shots.

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Here you can take a look at the scenery on that stretch of coastline about five or six kilometers from my hometown while in the following triptych ...

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... you can see my little dog called Bepina and me.

Bepina was often on the beach with me in those years.

She died a couple of years ago.

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One can always find some interesting garbage that the sea brings to shore from time to time. In two of the four shots presented in this little collection, a friend is playing something that resembles football with a rounded piece of styrofoam that functions very well as an improvised ball. That styrofoam sphere was originally a part of the buoy that signals the nets in deep parts of the bay.

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I found two elements of the plastic basket that envelop the fairly big, five-liter glass bottle that's usually used to store wine, vinegar, or olive oil in this area. The bottle wasn't there, it probably shattered into small pieces long ago.

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Equipped with that stuff, I performed a clumsy little dance for the friends who were there with me.

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Here you can see a friend who is very well camouflaged in the scenery while climbing the rocks. In the following shot ...

... the same friend is using a layer of mud to get almost completely invisible.

Here you can see Bepina and me watching the sea from the top of the rocks.

In this shot, a friend is engraving some deep thoughts into the dusty ground five or six meters from the shore. All the photographs shown in this first segment of the post were taken on the 26th of June 2014, in the area called Marlera, a couple of kilometers from Liznjan, the nearest village.

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On the 22nd of June, I spent the morning in the city. I was sitting with a bunch of friends in one of the fashionable cafes in the historic center of Pula when one-eyed aliens suddenly appeared, teleported from who knows where, a mothership in the Earth's orbit, another dimension, or the restaurant at the end of the universe.

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The cyclops from outer space looked lost and vulnerable in the weird urban environment of Pula, a place that feels so perfectly normal to me.

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Extraordinary things were quite common in 2014. My life had a certain dose of surrealism or magical realism that somehow got lost in the last few years.

The aliens waved us goodbye before silently disappearing into the hot summer air.

On the 29th of June, a friend from Medulin, my hometown ...

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... was celebrating his 59th birthday.

I wasn't much into photography on that occasion because I had better things to do but ...

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... but I took plenty of shots during the cutting of the birthday cake. It was a cool scene, nicely lit by the dining room lamp on the ceiling, right above the table. The only thing that partially ruined the photographic feast was the partially clouded lens of my damn, half-broken camera.

On the 27th of June, I stayed at home for the most part of the day ...

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... so I photographed some cool friends inside my apartment.

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Here, for example, you can see two friends, a male and a female, photographed early in the morning. She is in the living room - he is in the kitchen. The night view option of my camera gave the scene a weird greenish tinge.

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Here you can see a friend from the city that I rarely see.

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She was smiling for the camera when this series of five consecutive shots was taken. In the following photograph ...

... you can take a quick look through my kitchen window.

This is a portrait of a friendly hand behind the curtain.

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One of the friends present in the house on that day let me photograph only her feet.

She said: "Try to understand that I wanna offer only the best of me to the camera."

A friend is using my computer in this shot.

Here you can see her writing some mysterious annotations ...

... while garlic and dry Centaurium plant is hanging from the ceiling, right above her head.

In this photograph, the same friend is posing on the couch in the living room. She holds a dish with something fairly edible in it.

On the 30th of June, a friend and I spent the entire afternoon in Zminj, the small town in the central part of Istra, about fifty kilometers north of my hometown.

She was presenting her hand-made jewelry and souvenirs at the summer fair dedicated to pasta, all kinds of homemade pasta typical for this region.

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I was there to assist and photograph.

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When we arrived in Zminj ...

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... before preparing the things for the fair ...

... we had a drink in one of the local pubs.

An old-timer Trabant 601 car was parked in front of the summer terrace. That, along with the timeless bottle of Coke, gave a nice vintage feel to the scene.

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Here you can see a friend posing in the small square behind the church. The bales of hay shown in these six shots were brought there for the fair. In the following photograph...

... I'm posing in the same spot. The pasta-shaped decoration on my favorite sleeveless t-shirt is one of her creations.

The shirt I'm wearing in this and the previous photograph was an ordinary T-shirt when I bought it somewhere in the city. I cut the sleeves and a piece of the area that frames the neck later at home.

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At some point, we met another friend from Pula there at the fair.

It was a nicely unexpected encounter.

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In general, when it comes to that small summer fair, the whole experience was more fun than work.

We also made some new friends that day.

I photographed only two of them.

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Pasta dishes were cheap & varied ...

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... and we all ate a lot that day.

At 6:15 PM ...

... local politicians entered the scene. It was time for the official opening.

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The one on the left was probably the mayor of Zminj. Or a tourism-related official. Something like that. The one on the right was definitely the prefect of the region. I'm sure in this case because the man was pretty famous in those days. Can't tell you where are these people now.

The politicians were chatting in the shade of the trees behind the church.

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Children were playing in the gravel with which the fair area was covered. The atmosphere was really nice and relaxing.

On the doors of the toilets in the bar on the main square in front of the church, we found some unexpected, improvised, and highly original signs. This one is for men. The one shown in the following photograph ...

... is for women.

AND THAT'S IT. AS ALWAYS HERE ON HIVE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY WORK.