I can’t really complain about the lack of activity on campus today — I was putting in my first appearance there in 19 days so have no leg to stand on. In the Ellen Wilkinson building’s ‘learning commons’ there may have been someone skulking at the back but they do not appear on the shot. On the left, the mural is of the building’s eponym: Britain’s first female Minister of Education and someone of the general kind of good reputation and worthy history that means they have buildings named after them. She died in 1947 aged 55, so is another person I have outlived.
I don’t know, I spend the whole day — and a public holiday, no less — in one of the planet’s most significant cities and I feel like depicting at the end of it is breakfast. What this says about me, I no longer care. Actually I am quite happy with this picture: like many of the ones I like the best it is the one I intended to take when pressing the shutter. Over the road, the “Good Fortune Studio” stayed just like that throughout my 48 hours at this particular Travelodge, and that says something too.
If I was more of an artist I would come up with some allegorical statement here, the heads appear as if they are flying — but really, they are trapped, objects displayed for the delectation of visitors to this museum, none of whom will care for more than a few fleeting moments, if at all. Then again if I were more of an artist I would dispense with these commentaries altogether; I did try it once, way back, but it never took. This is the Neues Museum in Berlin, by the way: our last full day here.
What was formerly East Berlin still retains a sense of the Communist era, particularly thanks to the rather uniform tower blocks that sprout over most of it. And then there’s the former HQ of the Stasi, the secret police (officially the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit). This is now a museum. And while it could do with a bit more technology and a bit less running through the basics of Cold War history one does come to appreciate what insidiously awful wankers they were, and also how it was all proppsed up by a wide network of informers and ‘voluntary’ agents. The Stasi wouldn’t just surveill you — if they thought you were in any way subversive they were quite prepared to engage in the systematic erosion of your personal and profesional identity, setting you up to fail, turning your friends against you and giving the truth to the old saying, ‘are you still paranoid if they really are out to get you?’. This equipment is displayed in the place where it was used, concealed in the walls of a washroom on the Ministerial floor of the building, and so being used to spy even on those at the very top of the Stasi. Not that we’re a great deal different now — it’s just all done digitally instead. Orwell was close enough.
A Sunday afternoon game of cribbage. I won 3-2, by the way. As C pointed out when she first saw this, sometimes a blur is exactly the point of the shot.
Having mentioned my cameras yesterday, be it noted that our washing machine expired instantaneously last week, virtually exploding in the middle of its final spin (I thought a pneuamatic drill had started up outside). We need a new one, and in such circumstances round here, Domestic Discounts in Halifax (advt.) is the place to go. They do have some newer models than these ones. I like their 1950s robot look: but, I suppose, robots is what they are, machines to do our labour for us — though the auto-mangle has not yet been invented.
80s music aficionados will surely recognise the work of New Order (and Peter Saville) on the left: what a fine album is Power, Corruption and Lies. Hook and Sumner’s guitars are melodic and brilliant and they’d all discovered Ecstasy too. The 80s peaked right there if you ask me. Marc Almond puts in an appearance as well, and his lot weren’t bad either. Sadly I will never now see Soft Cell live, thanks to Dave Ball popping off this mortal coil last year (RIP). Clare went in 2021 but I was on St Helena at the time: bugger.
Today it was either Harvey Keitel or an avocado. I asked the wife. She said, she liked the avocado, but, Harvey Keitel. So here you are. (You know the movie, right?)
Another one where the verticals are doing a lot of the work. He looked pretty keen to get on the train that was coming: so was I, as it was the first leg (well, second, if I include the five-minute walk there from the hotel) of my journey home. I might be back next year… I might not. I probably wouldn’t come to Dubai on my own account but it’s not a bad place I suppose.
Being 42 