Slow Blue Camera

"Slow blue camera" is a metaphor from a Barry Dickens short story I read about a hundred years ago when I first came to Australia from the US and was wandering around St. Kilda trying to understand where I was and what this place was all about.

We'd all be swimming together, gorging up the flashing water, sparkles teasing the slow blue camera of the eye, twilight families splashing in joy. But dad'd sit on the sand, by the sea wall, swearing at the sandflies crawling over his wedge of fruitcake. Mum looks just like Esther Williams, though more stunning, splashing the cold seawater up her nose. 'Always cleans me out; there's nothing like it,' she'd say, and we'd realize how fantastic she was. I'd say 'Dad coming in, mum?'. And she'd say, 'Nah, he's got the hernia again,' and how sad he'd look reading the Reservoir Times and holding his side.

At last a storm'd brew up, and everyone'd clear the beach. Brass Holden ignition keys turning, cars blasting back to the city. The beach lashed by summer lightning and massive thunderbolts. But that's when dad'd run in and dive to us, and we'd the only family in the water, reunited in the sea.

-- Barry Dickens from "To the Beach Then, eh?"

Its one of the more beautiful metaphors I've ever read.  And as everyone needs a short, reliably unique, string of words and characters for for login names, secret digital handshakes, etc., I became fond of using "slowbluecamera" as each time I read it, it took me back to that beach.