A wholly uneventful Sunday. Joe staggered downstairs some time in the early afternoon and presented me with a couple of bottles of Old Peculier and this card, displaying his rather understated sense of humour.
This subway under Manchester Road in Rochdale is very neglected, a real hole in the ground. But with the sunshine pouring down from outside, it’s not unattractive.
Nostalgia…. Remember when these were touted as the latest thing? C30, C60, C90 Go! Cassette singles! Rewinding them with the help of a Bic! Spending hours on making compilations of obscure B-sides! There is now one place I can play these; the stereo of the Skoda Fabia that we pulled from the car pool and took to Dundee, hence the piling of what remains into a bag. And when that car gets replaced, probably soon enough…. they will probably become just another format that has had its day, all that information will be effectively lost.
Yesterday, the outside of the V & A Dundee — today, the inside. Except we’re not in Dundee any more, but it’s Studio 54 in New York, circa 1979, and Grace Jones is doing her inimitable stuff with body paint by Keith Haring. There are worse ways to spend a Sunday morning. (The exhibition is on until January, if you are interested.)
95 of the shots on this blog have been taken in Norway, making it the third most-depicted country after England and Australia, but there have been none since I took off from Tromsø airport on the morning of 26th April 2018. I was supposed to be there now, probably I would have journeyed over yesterday, stayed until the weekend, enjoyed the 24-hour sunlight, and the company of friends and colleagues. I could have stood once more where these singers are, namely the balcony at the top of the cable car, on Storsteinen. But we are all prevented from doing these things, and life is diminished as a result. I appeared at the ‘virtual conference’ because I didn’t want to let down people that I respect and like — but I’m not going to be attending any more of them.
We can’t have the more resource-efficient carafes of fruit juice because that way we will get the plague, or something Then again, there seemed only three people breakfasting this morning in the hotel, like the scene in Invasion of the Body Snatchers when the main characters go out for dinner and it’s like, ‘where is everyone?’. Nah, we don’t do that kind of thing, in the anticipated future. The mirror in the background doubles up on the number of cartons, and also makes this a self-portrait, kind of.
And where are all the people who should be in the empty offices, as pictured yesterday? Trapped behind these magic mirrors, in some kind of netherworld. Myth becomes life, and slowly we fade away, losing more and more connections with the reality we once knew.
Booth Street, Manchester. This is the most public of workplaces, floor to ceiling windows on the ground floor. It has lain empty for 15 months now. Today, the lights were on — yet still no sign of occupancy. The ‘evacuation point’ sign seems somehow meaningful.
On a day working at home and a quest for something, anything, to photograph, my eyes alighted on this sunlit pair of purples. Well, why not take a photo of cash. We’re seeing decreasing amounts of it — I don’t mean money (I admit that my income has been unaffected by the Covid crap and I sympathise completely with all of those for whom this is not the case), but just cash, the stuff you hold. Even then it’s all an abstraction, isn’t it. Yet look at the detail in these notes. They’re aesthetically pleasing if you ask me.
This morning was one of those occasions where a minor diversion from my usual route — in this case, leaving Victoria station by a different exit — helped me spot an opportunity for a picture. I had never noticed the S & M nature of this war memorial before. People pay to get trampled in this fashion: or so I’m informed. Actually I think the sub creature is an imp, or little devil of some kind, rather than a cherub: but the wings took longer to see.
Being 42 